Chapter 9 - The Web of Embezzlement Tightens Around Michael’s Neck
While peace blossomed inside the Sterling estate, the walls of the Federal Detention Center were closing in on Michael Vance.
Deprived of his luxury lifestyle, his corporate credit cards frozen, and his country-club friends turning their backs on him like the plague, Michael was drowning in a nightmare of his own making.
In the interrogation rooms of the United States Attorney’s Office, forensic investigators laid out thousands of pages of irrefutable evidence.
“Mr. Vance,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Ramirez stated, tapping a thick pen against a financial ledger. “Your signature appears on thirty-four separate wire transfers diverting Vanguard capital into the Aegis Holdings account in Grand Cayman. Miss Collins claims that you coerced her into setting up the corporate shell under threat of termination.”
Michael sat across the steel table in a bright orange jumpsuit, his face gaunt, his stubble thick and unkempt.
“She’s lying!” Michael screamed, slamming his cuffed hands against the metal table. “Amber planned the entire thing! She told me we could take forty million dollars out of Vanguard, buy out the Mediterranean shipping routes, and launch Aegis as a public entity on the London Stock Exchange! She seduced me, she managed the accounts, and she executed the wires!”
“Is that so?” Ramirez replied calmly, turning a page. “Then why did you personally authorize the purchase of a five-million-dollar villa in Saint-Tropez registered in Miss Collins’s maiden name using funds originating from Apex’s primary logistics escrow?”
Michael choked on his own breath. “She... she said it was a corporate retreat asset!”
“Miss Collins has already signed a proffer agreement with the government,” Ramirez said coldly. “She has agreed to testify as the state’s primary witness against you in exchange for a reduced sentence of five years at a minimum-security facility. You, Mr. Vance, are looking at twenty-five years in a federal penitentiary for wire fraud, tax evasion, and racketeering.”
Michael’s vision spun. The room seemed to tilt on its axis.
Amber had betrayed him.
The woman he had traded his eleven-year marriage for, the woman he had abandoned his newborn daughter for, had turned state’s evidence and sold him out to save her own skin in less than seventy-two hours.
“I want to speak to Catherine,” Michael gasped, tears of panic and horror streaming down his hollow cheeks. “Let me call my wife! She won’t let them send me to prison! She still loves me! She has to save me!”
May you like
Ramirez closed the file with a heavy, dismissive thud.
“Mrs. Sterling-Vance filed for a full, permanent order of protection and an expedited divorce decree two weeks ago, Mr. Vance,” Ramirez said with brutal finality. “You don't have a wife. You only have a sentencing hearing.”
Related Stories
