Chapter 3 - The Scramble for Cover
In a cramped, smoky motel room on the outskirts of the city, Daniel was pacing back and forth. The luxury of the brownstone was gone. Vanessa sat on the edge of the unmade bed, biting her nails.
"We need that forty thousand, Daniel! The landlord for the studio space is going to give it to someone else if we don't pay by Friday!" Vanessa yelled.
"Are you insane?!" Daniel snapped, slamming his fist against the cheap particle-board desk. "Claire froze every single account! I can't even pay for a decent lawyer! The police wouldn't even let me take my golf clubs from the house!"
"Use the corporate account from Vance Financial," Vanessa suggested, her eyes narrowing. "You're the Chief Operating Officer. You have signing authority."
Daniel stopped pacing. A desperate, dangerous idea took root in his mind. "Claire hasn't officially revoked my COO status yet. She needs a board meeting for that, which takes at least a week."
"Then do it now," Vanessa urged, coming closer. "Transfer the funds to my account. We take the money, pay the deposit, and get out of the state if we have to."
May you like
Daniel nodded, his judgment completely blinded by arrogance and greed. He opened his laptop, logged into the Vance Financial secure server, and initiated a wire transfer of $250,000 into Vanessa's personal account. He thought he was being clever, using a secondary routing number that bypassed the main alerts.
What Daniel didn't know was that Claire and a team of cyber-security experts were watching his login screen in real-time.
