Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN BEFORE EMILY
Natalie Price had been engaged to Victor eight years before he met Emily.
The Hale family never mentioned her.
Victor told Emily he had dated casually but avoided serious relationships until finding someone “stable.”
Natalie provided a different history.
She met Victor while working as an accountant for one of Lorraine’s property companies. He was charming, attentive, and unusually interested in her family background.
Within six months, he asked her to move into his apartment.
Within a year, Lorraine began correcting her.
Her clothes were too cheap.
Her laugh was too loud.
Her mother called too often.
Victor initially defended Natalie in private while asking her to remain polite in public.
Then the private defense disappeared.
He reviewed her spending.
He questioned her work friendships.
He insisted she transfer savings into a shared investment account managed by Lorraine.
The first time Natalie resisted at dinner, Victor leaned toward her and whispered, “Lower your eyes when my mother is correcting you.”
She laughed because she thought he was joking.
He took her car keys and left her at the restaurant.
Natalie ended the engagement two months later.
Victor kept twenty-eight thousand dollars from their shared account.
Lorraine threatened to accuse her of embezzlement if she sued.
Natalie had worked in Lorraine’s company and possessed access to financial records. The threat felt credible.
She walked away.
For years, she blamed herself for losing the money.
Then the restaurant video appeared.
“I saw Emily’s face,” she told Detective Reed. “I knew exactly what she was thinking.”
Natalie had preserved emails.
One came from Lorraine after the engagement ended:
Victor cannot build a future with a woman who mistakes equality for permission.
Another instructed the company’s accountant to classify Natalie’s missing funds as repayment for “unauthorized personal benefits.”
Victor sent one final message:
My mother was right. You needed discipline before marriage, not after.
The joint account containing seventy-five thousand dollars had been reopened using Natalie’s old information.
She did not know it existed.
Victor used it to move money from Emily’s home-equity line.
He placed stolen funds beneath the identity of one former fiancée and the debt beneath the identity of his wife.
The structure allowed him to blame either woman if investigators found the account.
Natalie agreed to testify.
The public learned only that another woman had come forward. Her name remained confidential until formal filings became available.
Victor’s supporters called her opportunistic.
Lorraine’s attorney suggested I recruited her.
I had never met Natalie.
When we finally spoke, it happened in Claire’s office.
Emily sat beside me.
Natalie entered carrying a document box and wearing the cautious expression of someone approaching a life she had escaped years earlier.
She looked at Emily.
“I’m sorry.”
Emily stood.
“For what?”
“I knew what he was like, but I never warned anyone.”
“You didn’t know me.”
“I could have reported him.”
“You were threatened.”
Natalie’s mouth tightened.
“I still left you there.”
Emily moved closer.
“He left both of us there.”
The sentence removed the competition Victor and Lorraine’s system depended on.
Women were supposed to compare suffering, assign blame backward, and fight over which of them should have prevented the next harm.
Emily refused.
Natalie opened the document box.
Inside were old company ledgers, emails, and a flash drive.
She had taken copies before leaving Lorraine’s business because she feared the embezzlement threat.
The records showed Blue Cedar Wellness existed before Victor met Emily.
Lorraine used it to create medical certifications, hide payments, and route money through insurance-related expenses.
The company also paid Diane Mercer for notarizations.
Natalie’s documents connected Lorraine’s sisters, Victor, Dr. Cole, and Jonathan Pike years earlier than investigators previously knew.
Priya Shah compared the ledgers to modern accounts.
The same payment codes appeared.
Lorraine had not improvised around Emily.
Emily was the latest target of a long-running family system.
The former judge in me understood the evidentiary importance.
The mother in me hated the years it represented.
The judicial-conduct board completed its review while the criminal investigation continued.
Its report found no evidence that I contacted judges, influenced assignments, or misused confidential information. It praised the steps taken to avoid conflicts.
Victor’s public-relations team ignored that conclusion.
They circulated an anonymous blog accusing me of “weaponizing the courts.”
The article included private details about my late husband’s illness and Emily’s childhood.
Only family members would know some of those facts.
Lorraine had provided them.
Emily read the article once.
Then she closed the laptop.
“She wants me to defend every year of my life.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
Her answer came faster now.
At the next family-court hearing, Victor appeared in person under guard because the criminal case remained pending.
He looked thinner.
His tailored suit no longer fit perfectly.
Emily sat beside Claire.
I remained in the gallery.
Victor’s attorney asked the court to modify the protective order so he could retrieve business records from the house and communicate about debt.
Claire opposed direct contact but agreed to supervised document retrieval.
Then the attorney introduced another accusation.
He claimed Emily had transferred fifty thousand dollars from a marital account immediately before filing for divorce.
Priya checked the transaction.
Money had indeed moved into a new account in Emily’s name.
Emily looked genuinely confused.
“I didn’t open it.”
The court ordered records.
The account had been created using the same false email pattern Victor used for her credit cards.
The transfer originated from his computer.
He had moved money into Emily’s name on the morning of the anniversary dinner.
Another prepared accusation.
Another Brooks file.
Victor’s attorney claimed his client knew nothing about it.
The judge ordered the money frozen and referred the records to Detective Reed.
As Victor was escorted from the courtroom, he turned toward Emily.
“You think these people will stay beside you after the attention ends?”
The deputy told him to face forward.
Emily answered anyway.
“I’m learning to stay beside myself.”
Victor looked back.
He had no response.
That afternoon, Priya contacted Claire with a discovery.
The fifty-thousand-dollar transfer had not come from Victor’s business account.
It came from a custodial trust created years earlier for a child.
The child was listed as Victor Hale Jr.
Emily and Victor had no children.
The birth date on the account was seven years earlier.
Natalie Price ended her engagement eight years ago.
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When Claire called her, Natalie went silent.
Then she said, “I was pregnant when I left him.”
