Chapter 6 - UNCOVERING THE GREED
By nightfall, Elena and Sophie were settled into the guest rooms at Marcus's spacious home on the outer edge of town. Sophie, exhausted beyond measure, had finally fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep after Marcus’s wife made her tea and helped her settle in.
In the kitchen downstairs, the atmosphere was tactical.
The dining table was covered in documents, laptop screens, and printouts. Isaiah had brought over a forensic accounting laptop, while Marcus was reviewing property deeds. Elena sat at the head of the table, holding a warm mug of coffee, staring at the small silver flash drive she had pulled from Daniel's closet.
"Plug it in," Elena said, setting the drive on the table. "Let's see what else he was hiding."
Isaiah plugged the flash drive into his laptop, running a quick virus scan before bypassing the simple password protection. Folders immediately populated the screen.
What they found went far beyond a simple extramarital affair.
"Look at these spreadsheet dates," Isaiah noted, clicking through a subfolder titled Project Phoenix. "This isn't recent. Daniel has been planning this exit strategy for over fourteen months."
As they clicked through the files, a horrifying financial narrative began to take shape:
Asset Siphoning: Over $450,000 had been systematically moved out of Elena and Daniel’s joint investment accounts into dummy LLCs registered under Clare Bennett’s name.
Property Devaluation: Daniel had deliberately defaulted on two commercial investment properties they co-owned, intending to buy them back through a third-party entity at a fraction of the price after filing for divorce.
Hidden Offshore Accounts: The flash drive contained direct access keys to an account in the Cayman Islands holding over $1.2 million in liquidated stocks that Elena didn't even know existed.
Elena stared at the numbers glowing on the LED screen. Fourteen years of marriage. Fourteen years of building a life, supporting his long hours, managing their home, raising their daughter—and the entire time, he was secretly building an escape hatch to bankrupt her.
"He was going to leave you with nothing," Noah said, slamming his hand down on the table. "He was going to serve you divorce papers, claim the accounts were drained due to bad market investments, and walk away with over two million dollars and his mistress."
"And he thought he could hit Sophie because he already viewed us as trash he was throwing away," Elena said, her voice dropping into an icy, unyielding tone.
Marcus leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "Elena, this changes everything. In a standard divorce, this would take months of discovery to prove. But you have his actual personal backup drive. He gave you the rope to hang him legally."
"What do we do now?" Elena asked, looking at her four brothers.
"Now," Marcus said with a cold smile, "we hire the meanest family law attorney in the state, we notify the State Bar Association of financial fraud, and we file for full custody with zero visitation rights."
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Elena looked down at her hands. The fear that had gripped her in that dark hallway at the party room was completely gone. In its place was a crystal-clear, fierce determination.
"No," Elena said, raising her eyes. "We don't just file. We dismantle him."
