Chapter 2 - The Audit of BetrayalBy midnight, the restaurant had closed, but the grand conference suite on the top floor of the Grand Meridian was ablaze with light.
Laptops, paper trails, forensic audit books, and half-empty coffee cups covered the twenty-foot mahogany table. Sigrid Green sat at the head, her reading glasses perched on her nose, while three forensic accountants from Deloitte worked tirelessly alongside her.
I stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, looking out over the dark red rocks of the Sedona valley. The fog was rolling in, wrapping the resort in a quiet blanket.
"Fiona?"
I turned to see Sigrid walking toward me, holding a warm cup of chamomile tea. She handed it to me, her eyes filled with deep, maternal sympathy.
"Drink this," Sigrid said softly. "You've been standing there for two hours."
I took the cup, feeling the heat radiate into my trembling hands. "Is it bad, Sigrid?"
Sigrid let out a weary sigh. "Worse than we thought. Holden wasn't just stealing the thirty-eight million dollars. Over the last three years, he’s been setting up a complex network of shell companies in Panama and Nevis. He was preparing to force Norwood Hospitality into a controlled bankruptcy, buy back our prime properties at auction for pennies on the dollar through Sterling Apex LLC, and strip you of every single penny of your inheritance."
My chest tightened. "He wanted to leave me with nothing."
"Worse," Sigrid corrected gently. "He structured the fraudulent loans so that you would be listed as the primary guarantor. If we hadn't caught this tonight, when the default hit next month, the federal government would have come after you for fraud, while Holden walked away with Katelyn Reed and fifty million dollars in liquid cash."
The cruelty of it made me physically sick. It wasn't enough that he had broken my heart, ruined our marriage, and paraded his mistress around my family’s properties. He had calculated my total destruction down to the last legal detail.
"Where is Katelyn now?" I asked quietly.
"She was escorted off the property by security at 9:00 p.m.," Sigrid replied with a faint, dark smile. "When she realized Holden’s credit cards were frozen, she left her luggage in the lobby and took an Uber to the airport. It seems her 'endless love' for your husband didn't survive his arrest."
I looked down at the tea in my hands. "What happens now?"
"Now, the real war begins," Sigrid said, her voice turning hard as iron. "Holden’s high-priced legal team in Los Angeles has already been notified. They're going to post his bail by morning and try to argue that the signature was authorized, or that you were a bitter wife trying to frame him. We need to go back to Montecito and secure the paper trail in your home office before his lawyers try to touch it."
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I took a slow sip of the tea. The quiet, gentle girl who had spent twelve years tending to her garden in Montecito was gone.
"Call my driver, Sigrid," I said, setting the cup down. "We leave for Montecito immediately."
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