Chapter 3 - The Shell Game
The revelation inside Marcus Sterling’s office changed the entire nature of the conflict. This was no longer a simple story of an abusive husband throwing coffee over a domestic dispute; it was a complex, premeditated corporate fraud designed to systematically drain Skylar’s professional life savings and destroy the business network she had spent a decade building.
Skylar returned to her hotel room, her heart pounding with an icy, controlled fury. She opened her main administrative portal—the centralized cloud software she used to manage shipping manifests, freight routing, and client billing for fifteen major logistics firms across the Southeastern United States.
She began a deep-dive forensic audit of her own system, looking for the digital fingerprints Derek had left behind. Because they lived in the same apartment and often shared the same high-speed network, Derek had easy access to her home office. She remembered several nights over the past year when she had caught him sitting at her desk late at night, his face illuminated by the blue glow of her screen, claiming he was just "checking his fantasy football league" or "looking up real estate listings."
He hadn't been checking football scores. He had been copying her client databases, stealing her custom invoice templates, and harvesting the private email addresses of her procurement directors.
"You idiot," Skylar muttered to herself as she uncovered a hidden digital script embedded in her outbound email server. It was an automated data-forwarding rule. Every time she sent a verified invoice to a major client, a duplicate copy was routed to an anonymous encrypted email address linked to Vance Logistics Solutions.
Derek would then use that information to send a follow-up email to the client from his mirror account, claiming there had been a "banking change" or a "routing optimization update," instructing the corporate accounting departments to wire the monthly retainer payments to his fraudulent Wells Fargo account instead of hers.
She checked her accounts receivable ledger. Over the last four months alone, three of her largest freight partners—firms based out of the Port of Miami and Jacksonville—had been unaccountably delayed on their quarterly administration payments. When she had called their accounts payable clerks, they had assured her that the wires had been sent and cleared. She had assumed it was a bank processing delay or an internal accounting error on their end.
In reality, the money had been successfully routed—straight into the hands of Derek and Suzanne. The total deficit was staggering: nearly $142,000 in diverted administrative fees.
Skylar sat back in her chair, the clear burn ointment on her face feeling tight as her jaw clenched. Derek thought he had broken her by throwing that boiling liquid. He believed that by injuring her face and threatening her security, he would force her into a defensive, submissive posture where she wouldn't look too closely at the numbers. He needed her compliant, or he needed her gone from the apartment so he could fully take over the operation with Suzanne before the clients noticed the fraud.
She pulled out her phone and called Marcus back.
"Marcus," she said, her voice dropping into that rhythmic, hyper-focused tone she used whenever a major freight container went missing at sea. "Don't file the standard divorce paperwork yet. Keep it quiet. I don't want Derek to know we’ve uncovered the shell company. If he thinks he’s only facing a domestic battery charge, his lawyers will try to negotiate a quick plea deal or a bail arrangement. I want him to stay exactly where he is, feeling confident, while I gather the digital evidence to hand him to the federal prosecutors."
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"The feds?" Marcus asked, a note of appreciation in his voice. "Wire fraud across state shipping lines... yes, Skylar. That crosses directly into the jurisdiction of the Southern District of Florida. If we prove he used the internet to intercept interstate commerce funds, he isn't going to county jail. He’s going to a federal penitentiary."
"Let’s give him exactly what he deserves," Skylar said.
