Chapter 3 - The Boardroom Execution
The corporate headquarters of Vance Global Logistics occupied the top twelve floors of a glass monolith in downtown Manhattan. By 2:00 PM that Friday, the marble lobby was in absolute chaos.
Security guards stood helplessly by the turnstiles as federal marshals escorted three high-ranking vice presidents out the revolving doors with cardboard boxes in their arms.
I stepped out of the private executive elevator on the forty-eighth floor, flanked by Raymond and two private security specialists.
Adrian was already inside the grand mahogany boardroom, pacing furiously behind the long conference table while three frantic corporate attorneys shouted into their cell phones. When the heavy doors swung open and I walked in, Adrian stopped dead in his tracks.
"Vivian!" he roared, storming across the room. "What the hell is going on downstairs? Security says our badge keys have been deactivated! Some lunatic in a suit just locked me out of my own office!"
"Not your office, Adrian," I corrected calmly, walking past him and sitting down at the massive leather chair at the head of the table—the seat his grandfather had occupied for thirty years. "Mine."
Adrian laughed, a frantic, hysterical sound. "Have you lost your grip on reality? You don't even know how to read a balance sheet! You're a housewife who couldn't even afford her own groceries without Marisol's permission!"
"Marisol has already been detained by the SEC for falsifying medical grant disbursements," Raymond noted casually, dropping a thick folder onto the mahogany desk in front of Adrian. "Would you like to review her signed confession, Mr. Vance? She was quite eager to cooperate once she realized embezzlement carries a federal minimum of ten years."
Adrian’s face twisted into an ugly mask of rage. He lunged across the table, his hands outstretched to grab my collar.
Before his fingers could graze my dress, Raymond’s security specialists moved with lightning speed. One of them caught Adrian’s arm in a brutal compliance hold, twisting it behind his back and slamming him down onto the conference table with a dull thud.
Adrian groaned, his cheek pressed flat against the polished wood.
"Let me go, you bastards!" he screamed, spitting blood onto the mahogany. "Vivian, call them off! I'm your husband!"
"Not for much longer," I said, opening my laptop and clicking on the encrypted file Raymond had prepared. "While you were busy dining with Celeste and telling me that Lily’s life wasn't worth the quarterly budget allowance, I was reviewing your personal expenditures. Over the last twenty-four months, you transferred four point two million dollars of corporate reserve funds into a private account in the Bahamas under the corporate entity Hale Logistics."
Adrian went rigid beneath the guard's grip. "How... how do you know about that?"
"Celeste isn't as discreet as you think, Adrian," I replied smoothly. "She bragged to her aesthetician about her new penthouse in Miami three weeks ago. My auditor tracked the IP address of the wire transfer straight to your laptop. The federal indictment was filed at noon."
The boardroom doors flew open again.
Two FBI agents walked in, their badges gleaming under the recessed lighting. They didn't even look at Adrian; they looked directly at me.
"Mrs. Sterling-Vance," the lead agent said politely. "We have the warrant for Adrian Vance and Celeste Hale on charges of wire fraud, corporate embezzlement, and reckless endangerment resulting in minor mortality through willful medical deprivation."
"Take them," I said.
Adrian screamed as the agents hauled him to his feet, slapping steel handcuffs around his wrists. As they dragged him toward the elevators, he looked back at me with eyes wide with terror and disbelief.
"Vivian! Please! We can fix this! We have a history!"
May you like
"Our history ended when you told me to put our dying daughter's ashes in the basement," I whispered.
The elevator doors closed, sealing him away from the empire he had spent his life stealing.
