Chapter 5 - The Ultimate Betrayal
I met Arthur at his office at midnight. The desk was covered in financial ledgers, bank routing numbers, and IP addresses.
"Who is it, Arthur?" I demanded, my hands trembling slightly for the first time. "Who helped Mark bypass my company’s secondary verification codes? He’s smart, but he doesn't know enough about corporate accounting to hide twelve million pesos from my internal auditors."
Arthur looked at me with deep sympathy. He pulled out a single document and slid it across the table.
"The secondary verification codes were approved via an encrypted IP address belonging to a residence in Alabang," Arthur said quietly. "The owner of that residence is your own sister, Victoria."
The room fell completely silent. My sister. Victoria.
Victoria was my older sister, the one who had always struggled financially, the one I had given a high-paying job as the Head of Human Resources in my firm out of pure familial love. I had bought her a house. I had paid for her children’s private school tuition.
"No," I whispered, shaking my head. "No, that’s impossible. Victoria loves Lily. She hates Mark."
"She pretended to hate Mark to keep you from suspecting them," Arthur explained, pulling up a series of text messages recovered from Mark’s seized phone. "Look at the timestamps, Elena. Victoria wasn't just helping him hide the money. She was taking a thirty percent cut of everything Mark stole from you."
I read the texts. My own sister’s words flashed on the screen: “Make sure Elena stays on that Singapore trip for an extra two days. Give her more work to do. The longer she’s away, the more we can transfer out before the quarterly audit. And make sure your mother keeps that brat quiet so Elena doesn't get suspicious.”
'That brat.' My sister was talking about my daughter.
They were all in on it. My husband, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and my own flesh and blood. They had turned my entire life, my company, and my child into a cash cow, picking at my bones while I worked myself to exhaustion to provide for them.
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The grief was sharp, like a physical knife to the chest. But within seconds, the grief evaporated, replaced by a roaring, consuming fire of absolute fury.
"Arthur," I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Call the authorities. We’re expanding the criminal charges. I want my sister arrested at her desk tomorrow morning in front of the entire company."
