Chapter 9
Carter glanced around the deserted foyer before leaning in close. "The offshore entity David used to transfer the four hundred thousand dollars... it wasn't registered in the Cayman Islands as he claimed."
Laura frowned, her grip on Leo tightening instinctively. "What do you mean? The bank statements showed Grand Cayman."
"Those were forged statements, Laura," Carter whispered, his face unusually grim. "The wire transfers were routed through a private holding firm in Zurich. A firm named Aegis Capital Partners."
Laura’s breath hitched in her throat. The color drained from her cheeks, leaving her fair skin as pale as marble.
"Aegis?" Laura murmured, her voice barely audible. "That was... that was my father's old venture capital vehicle before he died."
"Precisely," Carter said, nodding gravely. "Which means David didn't set up this embezzlement scheme on his own. He didn't have the financial sophistication to locate an inactive Swiss shell company from twenty years ago. Someone gave him the routing codes. Someone gave him the authorization keys to access your father's dormant ledger."
Leo rested his heavy little head against Laura's collarbone, his breathing slow and rhythmic as exhaustion finally took over his small body. "Mommy, are we going to see Grandpa?"
Laura closed her eyes, swallowing the lump in her throat. "No, baby. Grandpa is in heaven. But Mommy is right here."
She opened her eyes, looking directly at her attorney. "Who authorized the Swiss transfer, Carter? There were only two people in the world who had secondary signatory rights on that ledger."
"I know, Laura," Carter said softly.
"My uncle Julian died four years ago," Laura continued, her voice trembling with a new, dawning horror. "Which leaves only one person."
"Your sister," Carter said.
The foyer seemed to tilt on its axis.
Vivian Sterling-Hayes. The older sister who had moved to London three years ago, the sister who had refused to attend Laura’s wedding to David, claiming she couldn't bear to watch Laura throw her life away on a middle-class opportunist.
"Vivian?" Laura whispered, her mind racing through dozens of fragmented memories. "Vivian hated David. She called him a parasite to his face."
"She called him a parasite in public, Laura," Carter said, opening his briefcase and pulling out a single sheet of thermal fax paper. "In private, she had her European accounts linked to David’s shell company since last October. Every dollar David extracted from your domestic trust was matched fifty percent by transfers from Vivian’s account in London."
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"Why?" Laura gasped, tears of betrayal stinging her eyes far deeper than any insult Evelyn or David had ever hurled. "Why would my own sister fund David’s destruction of my life?"
"Because under the terms of your father's will," Carter explained with painful clarity, "if you are declared legally incompetent due to financial negligence, or if you lose custody of your legal heir due to demonstrable domestic instability... the entire Sterling-Hayes estate reverts to Vivian's sole control."
