Chapter 14: The Deposition
The main conference hall of the District Attorney’s office was a room of sandblasted glass and gray concrete, overlooking the cold, gray expanse of the harbor. At 11:00 AM, the video deposition was underway, the red light of the primary camera glowing steadily on the wall unit.
Richard Miller sat at the far end of the table, his hands cuffed to the iron security link below the wood grain, his head lowered, his face completely pale under the fluorescent lights. Beside him, his defense counsel sat in total silence, their legal folders closed.
I sat at the opposite end of the table, my posture perfectly rigid, my voice data-driven, clear, carrying an icy authority that cut through the low click of the court reporter’s machine.
"On the morning of Tuesday, November eleventh," I testified, my eyes locked onto the camera lens, "I entered the front desk infrastructure following a long period of regional brand operation. The defendant, Richard Miller, manually siphoned corporate assets from the Grand Regent to fund his sister's margin lines. The transactions were masked through a network of shell companies registered in Delaware."
The prosecutor leans forward, his face serious. "And what was the nature of your financial relationship prior to that morning, Ms. Lin?"
"It was a relationship of systematic, unmitigated financial extraction," I said coldly. "The defendant utilized forged cryptographic signature keys to siphoned corporate funds from Core Dynamics to fund his brother's accounts. The tracking parameters are absolute."
Richard slowly lifted his head, his bloodshot eyes looking at me across the table, his voice a low, broken sob. "Ethan... please... I was trying to protect the firm... Mom was pushing me... I didn't think the compliance trackers would pick it up..."
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"The tracking parameters are absolute, Richard," I replied, my voice perfectly level, completely drained of emotion. "You did not view me or my daughter as human beings; you viewed this company as an unregulated pool of liquidity to fund your liabilities. But you miscalculated the risk metrics."
His defense counsel leaned over the table, sliding the signed asset waiver documents across the polished wood toward the prosecutor. "The defendant has signed the total waiver of assets, Your Honor. We are requesting an immediate integration of the plea agreement to skip the grand jury trial."
