Chapter 10 - The Reckoning of Daniel
The following afternoon, Daniel was summoned to Evelyn’s office under a mandatory emergency deposition subpoena.
His attorney, Arthur Pendelton, sat beside him, looking visibly nauseous. Pendelton had clearly seen the copies of the ledger found in the lake house safe that Evelyn had faxed to his firm at dawn.
"Mr. Pendelton," Evelyn began, the digital recorder blinking red in the center of the table. "Before we formally swear in your client, I want to advise you that the documents retrieved yesterday from the Lake Harmony property have been placed in an evidentiary vault. They contain unequivocal proof that Daniel Vance forged his wife’s identity on foreign banking transfers associated with the Robert Vance estate, totaling over four hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
Pendelton closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "Daniel... what have you done?"
"It wasn't my idea!" Daniel suddenly broke down, his composure shattering into hysterical sobs. He grabbed Pendelton's sleeve like a terrified child. "Arthur, you have to believe me! It was my mother! She made me do it!"
I sat across from him, watching the man I had once thought was my protector unravel into a spineless coward.
"She told me Dad had left everything to his secret mistresses!" Daniel wept, tears streaming down his hollow cheeks. "She said if we went through probate, the family name would be ruined, and we would be left on the street! She told me Sarah was an outsider, that she would leave me if she knew the truth! She made me set up the LLC! She made me take Sarah's money because the offshore accounts were locked under tax flags!"
"You put my signature on international bank transfers, Daniel," I said, my voice cutting through his frantic babbling like a scalpel. "You made me an accomplice to federal crimes. If that audit caught up with you, I was the one who would have gone to prison."
"I was going to fix it!" Daniel pleaded, reaching across the table toward me, but flinching back when Evelyn glared at him. "Sarah, please! I love you! I got caught between my mother and my life! You know how she is, she’s suffocating, she threatened to cut me off, she threatened to tell everyone I was a failure! I did it for us!"
"You did it for yourself," I replied coldly. "And you did it for her."
At that exact moment, the door to the conference room burst open.
Linda Vance marched into the room, breathing heavily, her hair disheveled, her expensive coat buttoned unevenly. She had clearly followed Daniel from their family home.
"Don't you dare blame me, you weak, pathetic little boy!" Linda screeched, her voice echoing off the glass walls.
Daniel flinched as if struck. "Mom?"
"You stole from that trust because you couldn't make partner on your own merit!" Linda pointed a bony, trembling finger at her son. "You couldn't even control your own wife! You let this low-class little girl outsmart you! You’re not my son. You’re a disgrace! If I go down, Daniel, I will tell the investigators that every single transfer was forged by your hand!"
Daniel stared at his mother in utter, paralyzed disbelief. The woman he had destroyed his marriage for, the woman whose demands he had placed above every single vow he made to me, had just thrown him under the bus without blinking an eye.
"Get out of my office, Mrs. Vance," Evelyn said calmly, standing up. "Security is already in the elevator."
Linda turned her furious, wild eyes toward me. "You think you’re smart, Sarah? You think you've won? You haven't seen the end of this!"
Two armed building security officers stepped through the doorway, flanking Linda and firmly escorting her backward out of the suite, her shrill curses fading down the hallway until the heavy glass doors slammed shut.
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Daniel sat at the table, his face buried in his hands, weeping uncontrollably in the ruins of his mother’s love.
***
