Chapter 6 - The Bride’s UltimatumDaniel turned pale, staring at the papers scattered across the table.
"Madeline, honey, listen to me, those are internal drafts—"
"Shut up, Daniel," Madeline snapped, her voice cutting through the room with freezing precision. She turned her gaze to me, her expression softening slightly into one of shared, devastating understanding. "When you walked out six years ago, Claire, I was just starting out as a junior corporate strategist at his firm. I thought he was a visionary. I thought he was a good man."
She walked over to the desk, picking up a printed bank statement with bold red circled figures.
"Two weeks ago, when we applied for our joint marriage asset declaration, I noticed something strange," Madeline continued, her eyes locked on Daniel. "A series of massive wire transfers moving out of our personal wedding fund into an offshore account in the Caymans. An account registered under an LLC called Beacon Ventures."
My breath caught. Beacon Ventures was the name of the shell company Julian had just mentioned in connection with the fraudulent filings.
"I ran a trace on the registry," Madeline said, looking back at Daniel with undisguised disgust. "The primary beneficiary of Beacon Ventures isn't the corporation. It's a private trust. And the sole trustee... is Daniel Whitfield's mother. He was embezzling from his own company to fund his lavish lifestyle, and he was framing Claire for the paper trail so the SEC would look at her instead of his offshore accounts."
Daniel backed away until his shoulders hit the glass window pane. The invincible tech executive, the darling of Seattle's business pages, was completely dismantled in less than twenty minutes by his six-year-old son, his ex-wife, and the bride he had tried to manipulate.
"You can't prove any of this," Daniel whispered, his voice cracking. "The accounts are encrypted under corporate privilege—"
"Not anymore," a calm, familiar voice spoke from the doorway.
May you like
Julian stepped into the room, holding a heavy encrypted flash drive. He looked straight at Daniel, his expression completely devoid of loyalty.
"I downloaded the master decryption keys thirty minutes ago, Daniel," Julian said quietly. "I sent copies to the federal prosecutor's office and the board’s audit committee before I walked out here. By sunrise, the freeze orders go into effect."
