Chapter 3 - The Boardroom Coup
The threat of a custody battle hung over my head like a guillotine.
The next day, my lawyer, Marcus, met me at a quiet coffee shop near the lake. He looked grave as he laid out a series of legal filings.
"Adrian’s legal team has already filed a petition for a court-ordered paternity test," Marcus said. "If the DNA matches—and we know it will—he has the resources to drag this out for years. He can claim you alienated the children from him, and with his family's influence in the local courts, he could win partial custody. Or worse."
"I won't let him take them, Marcus," I said, my hand clenching into a fist. "They don't even know him."
"There is one loophole," Marcus said, leaning in. "If we can prove that Adrian's mother and Vanessa actively committed fraud to keep you apart, and that they misused Mercer Global corporate resources to falsify bank records, we can discredit his entire family in the eyes of the judge. But we need hard evidence. We need the original servers from Mercer Global's private security firm."
"I know how to get them," a voice said from the booth behind us.
I turned in surprise. Chef Daniel Rhodes was standing there, holding a tablet.
"Daniel?" I gasped. "What are you doing here?"
"I’m a partner in Little Harbor now, Claire," Daniel smiled, sitting down beside me. "And I don't like bullies. My cousin is the chief IT administrator for Mercer Global’s real-estate division. He’s been complaining for years about Victoria Mercer using corporate accounts to fund 'private investigative operations' that don't appear on the official ledger."
Daniel tapped his tablet, revealing a encrypted folder.
"This is the transaction history from five years ago," Daniel said. "It shows a five-figure payment from Victoria Mercer's personal account to a private investigator, with the memo: 'Target: Claire Mitchell. Operation: Total Isolation.' And guess who co-signed the corporate authorization form?"
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I stared at the name at the bottom of the document.
Vanessa Cole.
