Chapter 4 - The Boardroom Siege
By 8:00 AM the following morning, the glass-and-steel skyscraper housing Vale & Rowe was surrounded by news vans and reporters.
Inside the 40th-floor boardroom, Daniel sat at the head of the long glass table, surrounded by three criminal defense attorneys and his PR team. His eyes were bloodshot, his tie loosened, his hair disheveled. Across from him, Elise sat in a corner, frantically typing on her laptop as her phone rang off the hook with media inquiries she could no longer control.
The heavy double doors of the boardroom swung open.
Nora stepped inside. She didn't wear the quiet velvet dress from the night before. She wore a tailored charcoal-gray pantsuit, her auburn hair pulled back into a sleek, professional bun. Beside her walked Arthur Bell and three senior auditors from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"Nora," Daniel snapped, standing up. "You have no right to bring federal auditors into my building!"
"It's not your building anymore, Daniel," Nora replied calmly, placing a leather briefcase on the table.
Arthur stepped forward, handing a thick stack of legal injunctions to Daniel's lead attorney.
"As of 6:00 AM today," Arthur announced, "the Vance-Vale Estate Trust exercised its majority voting rights under the original 1998 corporate charter. Nora Vance has been appointed interim Chairwoman of the Board."
"What?!" Elise gasped, jumping up from her chair. "That's illegal! Daniel is the Managing Partner!"
"He was the Managing Partner," Nora corrected, looking directly at Elise. "Until the SEC audit revealed that over the last eight months, Daniel funneled $2.4 million in firm development funds into an offshore shell company registered under your name, Miss Marlow."
Elise froze, her hands hovering above her keyboard. "That... that was for communications consulting!"
"Unbilled, unvouched, and transferred directly to a private bank in the Cayman Islands," one of the SEC auditors stated, pulling a stack of bank transfers from his file. "Miss Marlow, you have five minutes to retain independent legal counsel before federal marshals arrive to execute a search warrant on your office."
Elise looked at Daniel, waiting for him to defend her.
Daniel didn't look at her. He looked down at the table, his chest heaving, realizing that the trap he had built for his wife had sprung on himself.
"Daniel?" Elise whispered, her voice trembling. "Say something!"
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"Get out, Elise," Daniel muttered coldly, refusing to meet her eyes. "Just get out."
Realizing she had been abandoned, Elise grabbed her designer bag and sprinted out of the boardroom in tears, straight into the cameras of the reporters waiting in the lobby below.
