Chapter 8 - THE AUDIT
The forensic team arrived on a Tuesday morning with the quiet efficiency of people who had done this a hundred times. Alex, still glowing from his engagement announcement, offered them coffee and full access, certain there was nothing here that could touch him.
By Thursday, the auditors had found the insurance policy taken out eight months before the wedding. By Friday, they had cross-referenced it with the notary's sealed statement, now unsealed and notarized fresh in Ingrid's office. By the following Monday, they had traced the judge's campaign funding back to a shell account controlled by Alex's own attorney.
Ingrid delivered the full report not to the press, and not to the police — not yet. She delivered it to Veronika, who read it in a single sitting at the kitchen table of the small coastal house she had bought under a false name, the same table where she had first learned, nine months earlier, to hold a fork again with her weaker hand.
"He's going to lose everything," Ingrid said. "Legally. Financially. All of it. Even before anyone charges him with anything."
Veronika closed the folder. "Not everything," she said. "Not yet."
May you like
She picked up her phone and dialed a number she hadn't used in almost a year — her own company's chief of security, a man who had once, long before any of this began, sworn her a loyalty Alex had never bothered to earn.
"I need you to arrange a meeting," she said. "At the gala venue. This Saturday. Tell no one who's coming."
