Chapter 3 - The Cage Door Closes
At 8:00 AM on Friday morning, Dominic was formally processed at the Cook County Jail.
Thanks to the preliminary evidence Evelyn had submitted—including three years of emergency room records from various private clinics outside the city that I had secretly compiled—the prosecutor requested a high cash bail. The judge set it at $500,000, requiring a ten percent cash bond to secure his release.
To a man who claimed to run a multi-million-dollar consulting empire, fifty thousand dollars in cash should have been a trivial sum.
Except Dominic couldn't access a single penny.
Every corporate account belonging to Vance & Sterling was frozen under our court-ordered audit. His personal accounts—which were tied to joint holdings that required my dual signature for transfers exceeding ten thousand dollars—were completely locked.
Desperate, Dominic called my parents from the jailhouse phone.
I sat in my hospital room with Evelyn, listening to the recorded jail call that my legal team had legally obtained through the prosecutor's disclosure file.
"Arthur! You have to help me!" Dominic’s voice was frantic, stripped of its smooth, condescending polish. "Victoria froze everything! I need fifty thousand dollars cash for the bail bondsman right now! Use the money from your house closing!"
My father’s voice came through the speaker, strained and trembling with anger. "What money, Dominic?! She pulled her guarantee! The bank canceled the loan, and the builder took our seventy-five thousand dollar deposit! We don't have fifty thousand dollars! We're broke!"
"Then take out a second mortgage on your current house!" Dominic screamed into the receiver. "If I stay in here over the weekend, the board is going to vote me out! The audit is starting on Monday! Do you understand what happens if that auditor opens the Apex Holdings file?!"
Silence hung on the line for a long, heavy moment.
"What... what is the Apex Holdings file, Dominic?" my father asked slowly.
"It doesn't matter!" Dominic yelled. "Just get me out of here!"
"No," my mother’s voice suddenly cut in on the extension, cold and sharp. "We spoke to our own lawyer an hour ago, Dominic. He told us that if Victoria presses charges, we could be implicated as accessories if we used funds connected to your business. You told us you had everything under control. You told us she was obedient!"
"She was obedient until you two pushed her!" Dominic roared. "You asked her for the mortgage guarantee! You made her feel cornered!"
"Do not speak to us like that!" my mother shouted back. "We gave you our daughter! We gave you our social standing! And now our savings are gone!"
"Your daughter is a snake!" Dominic screamed. "She’s been planning this for years! She kept files on all of us!"
Click.
My parents hung up on him.
I sat in my hospital bed, watching the digital audio file finish playing on Evelyn's laptop. The two forces that had dominated my life—the abusive husband who used violence to control me, and the callous parents who used emotional guilt to exploit me—were turning on each other like starved animals trapped in a cage.
"Dominic will remain in custody through the weekend," Evelyn said, closing her laptop. "The forensic accounting team steps into Vance & Sterling’s headquarters at nine o'clock on Monday morning. By noon, we will have enough evidence of corporate embezzlement to hand the case over to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois."
"And my parents?" I asked.
"Your father called my office three times this morning," Evelyn replied, her eyes cold. "He offered to 'mediate' between you and Dominic if you agree to restore the mortgage guarantee so they can recover their earnest money deposit."
I let out a soft, dry laugh that made my broken ribs ache. "He still thinks this is a negotiation."
"What do you want me to tell him, Victoria?"
May you like
I turned my head to look out the window at the morning sun breaking over the city skyline. "Tell him that the daughter who obeyed them died in the ICU on Wednesday night. Tell him if he calls your office again, I will release the documentation showing how he used Dominic's company to hide thirty thousand dollars of unreported income from his own tax returns."
Evelyn smiled—a sharp, brilliant expression. "Consider it done."
