Chapter 7 - Blood in the Water
My mother had seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars?
After Dad died, Evelyn sat across from me in her tear-stained mourning veil, weeping that the probate taxes had devoured every cent of Dad’s savings. She had looked me in the eye and told me that if I had any decency, I would sign over my remaining share of Dad’s patents to Julian’s firm so she wouldn't be evicted into the cold.
I had given up the physical family home to her, taking on sixty-hour work weeks in a cramped tech incubator, surviving on stale ramen and borrowed laptops, while she moved into the gated country estate Rosie bought with Julian’s 'bonuses.'
And all along, she had three-quarters of a million dollars sitting in an offshore stash—money she willingly handed over to Julian to bet against my father's memory.
"Get me the wire confirmation slips," I told Sarah, my voice dropping into an octave so cold it surprised even me. "And flag the receiving account. I want an immediate freeze order drafted for Crestview under the emergency anti-fraud injunction."
"On it," Sarah replied, already typing rapidly.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. The caller ID flashed: *ROSIE*.
I didn't answer. I slid the phone into my bag, took the private executive elevator up to the 34th floor, and spent the next three hours signing the restructuring documents that effectively dismantled Julian’s division, reassigned his junior staff to ethical managers, and severed the firm's ties to his shell entities.
By one in the afternoon, I left the building through the private basement garage.
When my town car pulled up in front of my brownstone in Brooklyn Heights—a quiet, brick building I owned through an anonymous trust—I saw her.
Rosie was pacing the sidewalk in front of my iron gate, shivering in a white cashmere coat, her designer sunglasses pushed up into her tangled, bleached-blonde hair. She was clutching a cardboard box full of Julian’s personal desk effects—the guards had already cleared out his home office branch in the city.
The moment my car door opened, she stormed across the pavement like a fury.
"You psychotic monster!" she shrieked, swinging the box toward my face.
I caught the edge of the cardboard easily, shoving it aside with enough force to send her stumbling back onto the curb.
"Keep your hands to yourself, Rosie," I warned, stepping onto the sidewalk.
"Julian is locked out of our bank accounts!" she screamed, tears cutting dark tracks through her foundation. Neighbors were starting to poke their heads out of windows. "Our black cards were declined at the pharmacy! The dealership just showed up to repossess his Porsche! Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You’ve humiliated us!"
May you like
"I haven't even started humiliating you," I said, pulling my keys from my pocket. "Julian didn't lose your cards, Rosie. He forged your name."
***
