Chapter 3 - The Frozen Fortress
By Saturday morning, the locks on the entire estate had been changed. I sat in my home office, my left hand navigating the laptop while my broken right arm rested on a soft pillow. The mansion felt completely different without the suffocating presence of the Vance family. It felt like a fortress again.
My phone rang. It was Sarah Jenkins, my longtime colleague and a senior forensic auditor at the bank where I used to work.
"Valerie, I just finished running the deep-dive audit on the joint account logs you sent over," Sarah said, her voice grim. "It’s worse than eighty thousand dollars. Ethan didn't just try to transfer that money on Tuesday. He’s been systematically siphoning funds into an offshore shell company for the last fourteen months."
I closed my eyes, a cold knot tightening in my stomach. "How much, Sarah?"
"Nearly four hundred and fifty thousand," she sighed. "And guess who the co-signer on that shell company is? Not Natalie. It’s Victoria. Your mother-in-law has been laundering your architectural and consulting bonuses through Natalie’s failing boutique to fund her own gambling debts in Black Hawk."
A harsh laugh escaped my lips. "They called me a burden. They joked about my broken arm while living off the blood, sweat, and tears of my career."
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"They’re desperate, Val," Sarah warned. "Ethan’s defense attorney is already applying for an emergency bail hearing. Victoria is trying to use her old country-club connections to secure a loan to get him out. If he gets out, he will come for you."
"Let him come," I said, staring at the white cast on my arm. "I've already filed for an emergency protective order, and the bank is freezing every single account associated with their names. They think they can play the system, but they forgot who taught them how the system works."
