Chapter 5 - Digital Warfare
By midnight, the dining room table looked like a war room. Three separate monitors glowed in the dark, casting pale blue light across stacks of verified wire confirmations, bank statements, and encrypted chat transcripts that Elena had extracted from Mark’s mirrored hard drive.
""He’s sloppy,"" Elena remarked through the screen. ""Arrogant men always are. He thought because he encrypted the drive with AES-256, nobody would ever bypass the partition. He used the company email to route initial escrow communications.""
""How much did he take?"" Claire asked, sipping cold black coffee.
""From your personal trust? Seven point two million. From your father’s legacy foundation? Another five,"" Elena clicked a folder open. ""And he’s using Eleanor’s passport details as the straw owner of the shell company in Monaco. They literally landed in Nice two hours ago. They’re checking into the Hotel de Paris right now.""
""Does Sophia Vance know Mark’s accounts are mirrored?""
""Not yet,"" Elena said. ""Sophia is currently in New York. She manages the domestic holding company out of an office in Midtown. Tomorrow morning at nine, she’s scheduled to execute the default filing that kicks you out.""
Claire leaned forward, staring at the smiling photo of Mark and Eleanor from an old family Christmas card sitting on the credenza. They looked so aristocratic, so untouchable. Eleanor had always treated Claire like a working-class trespasser who had gotten lucky, constantly reminding her that the Sterling family name carried weight Claire’s bloodline could never match.
Let’s see how heavy that name feels in an interrogation room, Claire thought.
""Elena, revoke Mark’s executive access to the primary estate treasury. Do it under emergency spousal protective orders.""
""Done,"" Elena typed rapidly. ""The domestic accounts are locked. But Claire, there’s an anomaly here.""
""What kind of anomaly?""
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Elena’s face on the webcam turned dead serious. ""A wire went out four hours ago, just before Mark boarded his flight. Two hundred thousand dollars to a private security firm in Queens. The memo line doesn't say legal retainers. It says: Physical Eviction and Asset Cleansing.""
Outside, headlights cut through the blinds of the dining room window.
