Chapter 5 - Unholy Alliances
The identity of the secret informant remained a mystery as Friday arrived. Discharge day.
With Sarah's help, I bypassed my parents' planned intercept at the hospital's main entrance. Instead of being rolled out to my father’s waiting SUV, Sarah brought her car around to the private service loading dock at the rear of the building. Armed with a brace around my torso and a pair of crutches, I slid into the passenger seat, taking a deep, ragged breath of non-hospital air for the first time in nearly a week.
We didn't go to my apartment, nor did we go to my parents' estate. Sarah drove me to an old stone townhome on the outskirts of the city—the office of Marcus Vance.
The office was filled with the rich smell of old leather and mahogany. Marcus, a sharp-eyed man in his early fifties with graying temples, greeted us with a somber nod.
"You're looking remarkably sturdy for someone who had titanium screwed into their spine six days ago, Maya," Marcus said, pulling out an orthopedic chair for me.
"Anger is a powerful painkiller," I replied, carefully sitting down.
Marcus smiled grimly. "Good. You'll need that fire. We filed the emergency motion to freeze the trust accounts this morning. But your father isn't stupid. His legal team filed a counter-motion claiming that you are suffering from post-operative psychosis due to the heavy analgesics and surgical trauma."
"They're trying to prove I'm insane?" I gasped.
"They're trying to buy time," Marcus corrected. "If they can stall the freeze for seventy-two hours, the money in Chloe's new LLC will be wire-transferred to a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands. Once it leaves the country, recovery becomes nearly impossible."
"What about the informant?" Sarah asked, stepping forward. "Who sent Maya that bank transfer screenshot yesterday?"
Marcus leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "I was getting to that. The message came from a burner phone, but the digital signature embedded in the image file traces back to a terminal at your father’s investment firm. Specifically, the office of Arthur’s senior financial controller."
"David Miller," I blurted out. "David has worked for my dad for fifteen years. He knows every dollar that moves through that company."
"And David Miller has a history of his own," Marcus added, pulling a fresh sheet of paper from a folder. "It seems your father threw David under the bus three years ago during an IRS audit. David has been biding his time, gathering evidence of Arthur’s off-the-books transactions."
"So David wants revenge," I said.
"David wants immunity," Marcus corrected. "And he's willing to give us the original, unredacted power-of-attorney documents—complete with the fraudulent notary timestamp—if we agree to include his statement in our federal fraud complaint."
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I looked at Sarah, then back at Marcus. The scope of this fight was expanding far beyond a bitter family dispute over a hospital visit. It was turning into a full-scale war against a network of corruption that my parents had built over two decades.
"Call David," I said without hesitation. "Tell him he has his deal."
