Chapter 5 - The Fall of the House of Vale
By Friday evening, the story had broken across every financial news outlet in the country.
VALE HOSPITALITY CEO OUSTED AMID FORENSIC AUDIT. LUXURY MERGER COLLAPSES FOLLOWING EXPLOSIVE FRAUD ALLEGATIONS.
Dominic tried to retreat to his penthouse, but the press was camped out on the sidewalk. His personal accounts were frozen pending the SEC investigation, and his legal team—realizing he could no longer pay their retainer—began quietly stepping away from his representation.
At 8:00 PM, my doorbell rang.
I opened the door to find Celeste standing on the porch. She wasn't wearing white lace anymore. She wore plain jeans, a dark trench coat, and no makeup. She carried a small leather folder under her arm.
"Can I come in?" she asked softly.
I looked at her for a moment, then stepped aside. "In the kitchen."
She walked in, looking around the warm, warm-lit brownstone with a look of strange envy. She sat at the island—the same kind of marble island where Dominic had once served me divorce papers—and placed her folder on the counter.
"I signed the annulment papers today," Celeste said, her voice dry. "My father’s lawyers made sure it was fast. Fraudulent pre-conditions."
"I'm sorry about how it happened," I said, pouring two cups of chamomile tea. "You shouldn't have found out like that."
Celeste let out a bitter, quiet laugh. "I was stupid, Evelyn. He told me you were cold. He told me you were obsessed with money and that you were holding his life hostage because you couldn't handle him moving on. I believed him because it made me feel like the savior."
She pushed the leather folder toward me.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Copies of his personal diary and home computer backups," Celeste said. "He left his personal laptop at my father's estate the night before the wedding. My father’s IT guy bypassed the password. It contains the email archives from the shell companies. He was planning to blame you for the accounting irregularities if the SEC ever caught on. He had drafted fake memo trails showing you authorized the Cayman transfers before you left."
I opened the folder and scanned the printouts. The cold calculation was staggering. Dominic had prepared a paper trail designed to frame me as a disgruntled former officer who had executed rogue transactions to sabotage the company on my way out.
"Why are you giving me this?" I asked, looking up.
May you like
Celeste looked toward the stairs, where the faint sound of Maya crying softly came through the baby monitor before Clara hushed her back to sleep.
"Because he was going to destroy you and that baby just to save his reputation," Celeste said, her eyes brimming with genuine remorse. "And because I realized that if I had stayed with him, five years from now, I would have been the woman in that hospital bed."
