Chapter 6 - The Corporate CoupBefore Kate could finish her sentence, the investigator standing behind me pulled out his encrypted corporate tablet, his fingers flying across the screen at lightning speed.
"Sir," the investigator said, his face draining of all color. "She’s... she’s telling the truth."
I whipped around, staring at him. "Explain. Now."
"Just three days ago, a massive block of Class-B voting shares was transferred out of your personal trust into an offshore holding entity," the investigator stammered, holding the tablet out for me to see. "The digital signature authorizing the transfer... it matches your executive credentials. But the IP address originates from a residential server in Seattle—Marcus Sterling’s home."
My stomach plummeted into an bottomless abyss.
It all clicked into place with horrifying clarity. The delayed board meetings. The sudden urgency to restructure our voting rights under the guise of "estate protection" while I was grieving. Marcus hadn't just been running the West Coast branch; he had been executing a slow, methodical corporate decapitation while using Kate as a domestic anchor to keep me distracted, exhausted, and emotionally paralyzed at home.
"They planned it together," I whispered, the sheer scale of the betrayal washing over me in a cold wave. "Emily’s death... they used my grief as a weapon."
"Oh, please, don't be so dramatic," Kate sneer, crossing her arms over her chest. "Emily was weak, and you were blind. We just wanted what was rightfully ours. And by tomorrow morning, you’ll be out on the street—broke, disgraced, and fighting a criminal child abuse charge you can't buy your way out of."
She thought she had won. She thought the checkmate was complete.
She didn't know who she was dealing with.
I slowly turned back to look at Kate, the shock fading away, replaced by the cold, ruthless calculation of a CEO who had built a billion-dollar empire from the ground up. The panic was gone. The grief was gone. Only pure, unadulterated vengeance remained.
"Julian," I said without looking back.
"Yes, Daniel?" my lawyer replied, his voice deadly calm.
"Call the federal prosecutor’s office. Tell them we have an active corporate wire fraud and extortion conspiracy spanning two states involving Marcus Sterling."
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Kate’s smug smile faltered for a fraction of a second. "You... you can't do that. Marcus has the votes!"
"Marcus has stolen credentials and forged digital signatures," Julian answered smoothly, pulling out his own phone. "And under federal law, wire fraud nullifies any corporate restructuring executed within a ninety-day window of an active investigation. In short, Ms. Morrison... your partner in crime just walked into a federal trap."
