Chapter 4 - The Silent War
Over the next forty-eight hours, my Sandy Springs compound transformed into a war room.
I brought in Marcus Vance—a brilliant, cynical forensic accountant who had been my personal friend since college—and Victoria Sterling, a high-stakes corporate attorney who specialized in white-collar criminal exposure.
While Grace stayed by her mother’s bedside at Emory Hospital during the day, Marcus digged through twenty years of Oseni Hospitality financial records, matching the serial number from David’s journal with long-buried equipment acquisition logs from 2006.
“It’s unbelievable, Henry,” Marcus said, tossing a heavy stack of printed ledgers onto the oak desk in my study. “Arthur didn't just buy that GPS tracker through Oseni Security Dynamics. He listed the transaction as an 'operational risk expense' and signed the purchase order himself three days before your crash.”
“What about the police report from the night David was killed?” Victoria asked, adjusting her glasses as she reviewed the death certificate.
“I spent two hours with a retired homicide detective from the Atlanta PD last night,” Marcus replied. “He remembered the case. He said the original investigating detective was abruptly transferred off the case forty-eight hours after David’s body was found. The case was closed as an unsolved mugging by a rookie detective who happened to receive a seventy-five-thousand-dollar cash deposit in a shell account three weeks later.”
“We have the paper trail for the murder,” Victoria said, her eyes flashing with professional ambition. “We have corporate fraud, grand larceny, wire fraud, and accessory to murder after the fact. But if we go to the District Attorney now, Arthur’s legal team will file injunctions, tie this up in pretrial motions for five years, and Arthur will be on a private jet to Zurich before a grand jury is ever impaneled.”
“I don't want him in court for five years,” I said, leaning over the desk, my voice low and dangerous. “I want him ruined in front of the entire international business community. I want him to lose everything he built on my father’s grave.”
“How?” Marcus asked.
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I turned to look at Grace, who had just stepped into the study after returning from the hospital. She was wearing a simple, elegant navy dress I had ordered for her, her dark hair pulled back into a neat knot.
“At the Gala on Friday night,” I said. “Arthur thinks he’s giving a victory speech to two hundred international investors. We’re going to give them a confession instead.”
