Chapter 5 - The Poison Wrapped in Cashmere and Tears
Inside the quiet sanctuary of the cathedral, the air smelled of beeswax, cold stone, and extinguished candles. Julian Thorne was standing near the grand altar, his hands in his pockets, watching me approach with an unreadable expression.
"That was quite a performance on the steps," Julian said, his deep voice bouncing off the vaulted ceiling. "The media will have that video trending across three continents within ten minutes."
"It wasn't a performance," I said, walking down the center aisle where white rose petals had been laid out earlier that morning by decorators who didn't know the wedding was doomed. "It was an eviction notice."
Julian reached into his jacket and pulled out an encrypted tablet. "You might want to see this. My forensic accounting team spent the last four hours digging through the private accounts of Miss Lily Monroe."
I stopped beside him. "What did they find?"
"Lily Monroe is not a fragile artist who had an emotional crisis last night," Julian said, tapping the screen and handing it to me. "She is thirty-two million dollars in debt to a private equity syndicate in Macau."
I scrolled through the financial ledgers. Bank transfers, dummy shell companies in the Cayman Islands, and high-interest loan agreements flashed across the screen.
"She wasn't just Preston's childhood friend," I murmured, reading the transaction timestamps. "She was acting as an unregistered broker. She intentionally pushed Preston toward the high-risk developments in Brooklyn, knowing the subcontracts were being awarded to companies owned by her offshore creditors."
"Exactly," Julian nodded, stepping closer. "She was siphoning Vance Enterprises’ capital to pay off her own gambling and bad investment debts. She needed Preston to marry you today because your fifty-three million dollar cash injection was the only thing keeping her creditors from breaking her legs."
A dark, cold realization settled into my stomach.
Preston hadn't just been unfaithful; he had been utterly manipulated by a woman who saw him as an expendable shield. And in his blinding, arrogant stupidity, he had traded my loyalty for her venom.
"Does Preston know this?" I asked.
"Not a clue," Julian said with a low chuckle. "He still thinks she’s a helpless damsel who needs his heroic protection. He thinks he was playing the alpha male by humiliating you for her sake."
"Where is she going now?"
"According to her phone’s GPS tracking—which my security team has been monitoring since seven this morning—she just booked a one-way first-class ticket to Zurich departing from JFK at four this afternoon."
"She’s fleeing," I said.
"She’s liquidating whatever cash Preston gave her access to and running before the market closes," Julian confirmed. "Preston gave her power of attorney over two Vance secondary corporate accounts last month. She just initiated a wire transfer of four point two million dollars out of those accounts into a Swiss bank."
I looked up from the tablet, meeting Julian’s sharp, predatory gray eyes.
"Julian," I said.
"Yes, Victoria?"
"Can we freeze those accounts before the Swiss clearinghouse processes the transaction?"
Julian smiled—the kind of smile that preceded a corporate slaughter. "We don't need to freeze them. We own the underlying debt on those accounts as of twelve o'clock today. We can redirect the funds into an escrow account held by Thorne-Sterling, and alert Homeland Security to an unauthorized international transfer of encumbered corporate assets."
"Do it," I said. "And make sure the Port Authority Police are waiting for her at the gate."
May you like
"With pleasure," Julian murmured. He took the tablet back, his fingers brushing against mine for a lingering second. His touch was warm, firm, and entirely steady. "And what about Preston? He’s currently sitting on the sidewalk outside, being questioned by two police officers for disturbing the peace."
"Let him go home to his townhouse," I said coldly. "He needs to be there when the locks are changed."
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