Chapter 16 - Vanessa’s Price
Vanessa accepted a cooperation agreement.
Not immunity.
That distinction mattered to me.
She would testify about Evelyn’s shell companies, Adrian’s knowledge of off-book transfers, and her own participation in false invoices.
In return, prosecutors would consider her cooperation at charging and sentencing.
She hated the wording.
“Consider?” she said.
Dana Cho looked unimpressed. “Yes.”
“I’m handing you everything.”
“You also did things.”
Vanessa stared at her.
Then laughed once, bitterly.
“Right. Everyone keeps remembering that.”
I nearly said something cruel.
I didn’t.
Not for her.
For me.
Three days later, she asked to see Ethan.
I said no.
She asked again through Nora.
Still no.
Then she sent a handwritten letter addressed to him.
I opened it first.
Ethan,
I was mean to you because I wanted to hurt your mother and because I was jealous. That is not a good reason. There is no good reason.
The toys were meant to insult you. I knew that. I let it happen.
I am sorry.
You do not have to forgive me.
Vanessa
I read it twice.
Then I gave it to Ethan.
He read slowly.
At the end, he folded it in half.
“Do I have to write back?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He put it in a drawer.
Not the trash.
Not a treasure box.
A drawer.
That felt right.
The same afternoon, prosecutors recovered the Zurich funds.
Not all of them.
Seventy-one million remained.
Fourteen million had been moved through a chain of accounts and disappeared into what looked like personal purchases, political donations, real estate, and cash equivalents.
One transfer stopped everyone.
$2.4 million.
Recipient: Arthur Vale Foundation.
My father’s charity.
Dated three months before he died.
I stared at the screen.
“Why would Evelyn send my father’s foundation money?”
Priya pulled the foundation ledger.
“She didn’t.”
“What?”
“The recipient name is fake. The routing number belongs to a private account.”
“Whose?”
Priya’s face changed.
She turned the laptop toward me.
Beneficiary: Samuel Drake.
My father’s trust attorney.
The man who had been protecting the secret clauses.
The man who had just helped me take control of Voss Meridian.
May you like
The man sitting two floors below us.
