Chapter 5 - The Collapse of Dorsey Consulting
The fall of Colin Dorsey was swift, brutal, and utterly comprehensive.
By five o'clock that same afternoon, Detective Sarah Miller of the Connecticut State Police, working in tandem with the New York District Attorney's office, issued an emergency warrant for Colin’s arrest based on the clear, irrefutable bank forgery documents provided by Vance, Sterling & Hayes.
When Colin and Sloane arrived back at the corporate office in downtown Hartford that evening—hoping to gather company records before the freeze went into effect—they were met by four state trooper vehicles parked in the driveway with their lights flashing.
Colin was handcuffed on the front steps of his own regional headquarters in full view of his remaining staff members and local news crews.
Sloane Keating, found to have knowingly co-signed fraudulent expense reports using forged corporate lines, was named as a co-defendant in the civil asset forfeiture suit filed by my legal team. Her personal bank accounts were frozen, her corporate credit cards canceled, and she was summarily terminated from Dorsey Consulting by the company's remaining minority partners trying to save themselves from bankruptcy.
Two days later, I returned to the home in Connecticut—not as a helpless victim carrying two battered suitcases, but accompanied by a court-appointed sheriff and a team of movers.
Colin was out on a temporary two-hundred-thousand-dollar bail, funded by his desperate sister who had mortgaged her own condo to pull him out of jail pending trial. He was staying in a tiny, run-down studio apartment near the interstate.
When he saw my sleek black Range Rover pull up to the driveway of the Connecticut house, Colin ran across the lawn, looking disheveled, hollow-eyed, and wearing a cheap, rumpled shirt.
"Audrey!" Colin called out through the chain-link fence as the sheriff stood guard. "Audrey, please talk to me!"
I rolled down the window of my car, looking at him with quiet, unbothered detachment.
"Audrey... my lawyer says I'm facing five to eight years in federal prison for the mortgage forgery," Colin wept, gripping the steel fence wire with trembling hands. "They're liquidating my firm! Everything I worked twelve years to build is gone! Sloane left me yesterday—she took her things and moved back to her parents' place in New Jersey!"
"Sloane was only ever there for the illusion of money, Colin," I said softly. "You built a life on sand, and you're surprised it washed away in the first storm."
"What about our kids?!" Colin begged, tears washing down his hollow cheeks. "What about Maisie and Theo?! You can't let their father go to prison!"
"You didn't think about Maisie and Theo when you forged a mortgage against the roof over their heads to buy a mistress a diamond ring and lease a skyscraper floor," I replied, my voice steady and cold. "You taught our children that love is a transaction, Colin. I am teaching them that actions have consequences."
I rolled up my window.
The sheriff stepped forward, ordering Colin to stand back from the vehicle as my movers began clearing out the remaining personal items I wanted to take to New York.
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Within thirty days, the bankruptcy court ordered the full liquidation of Dorsey Consulting LLC. My legal team repurchased the Connecticut house at auction for pennies on the dollar, immediately deeding the property into an irrevocable educational trust for Maisie and Theo.
Colin Dorsey was left with zero assets, millions in corporate debt, an upcoming federal prison sentence, and the crushing knowledge that the woman he had kicked onto the porch was now sitting at the head of one of the largest real estate empires in New York City.
