Chapter 3 - THE RETALIATION
By eight o’clock that evening, Jared’s private security detail had arrived at my apartment building.
Jared refused to let me stay another night in the drafty flat. Despite my mild protests that I was used to the cold, he instructed his driver to pack my clothes and brought me directly to a quiet, high-end hotel suite in downtown Chicago while he dealt with the fallout at his Lake Forest home.
I sat in the comfortable armchair of the hotel room, watching the snow fall against the glass of the twentieth-floor window.
At 10:30 PM, my cell phone buzzed on the nightstand.
It was an unknown local number. I answered.
“You think you’re so clever, don't you, old man?” Lauren’s voice hissed into the receiver. She sounded hysterical, the polished socialite persona entirely gone.
“Good evening, Lauren,” I said calmly.
“You ruined my life!” she screamed. “Jared locked me out of the house! He froze our joint checking accounts! He’s sitting in his study with his corporate lawyers right now drafting divorce papers!”
“Lauren, you stole nearly three hundred thousand dollars from a trust meant for a widower,” I replied smoothly. “You ruined your own life the moment you signed my name on those withdrawal slips.”
“Do you really think you’re going to get away with this?” she sneered. “You think Jared is going to protect you when the public finds out what’s really going on?”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve already spoken to my family’s attorney,” Lauren said, her voice dropping into a malicious whisper. “If Jared files for divorce or presses criminal charges regarding that trust, I will go to the press. I will tell every business magazine in Chicago that Jared Blake left his elderly father to starve in a slum while he built his tech empire, and that he only stepped in when I threatened to expose him.”
The breath caught in my throat.
It was a brilliant, despicable narrative spin. In the court of public opinion, a tech CEO’s reputation could be destroyed in twenty-four hours by headlines claiming he neglected his aging father. It could tank his company's stock value and destroy his upcoming board election.
“Jared didn't know,” I said sternly. “You concealed it from him.”
“Who will the public believe, Oscar?” Lauren laughed coldly. “The high-flying CEO who was 'too busy' to visit his father for three years, or the devoted daughter-in-law who tried to manage a difficult, ungrateful old man? I will drag his company through the mud. I will ruin his reputation before he can spend another dime on your legal fees.”
She hung up the phone.
I sat in the quiet hotel room, the hum of the climate control filling the silence.
She was right about one thing: Jared had been too busy. He had trusted his wife blindly, and that negligence left him wide open to her extortion. If she went to the media with a twisted story about elder neglect, Jared’s board of directors would force him to step down as CEO by Monday morning.
I picked up my pen and my notepad.
Lauren thought she was playing a game of public relations and social extortion. She thought she could intimidate a seventy-two-year-old man who had spent his career untangling international tax fraud schemes for Fortune 500 executives.
She had forgotten rule number one of auditing: Every lie leaves a financial paper trail, and every paper trail can be turned into a trap.
I dialed Jared’s direct line.
“Dad?” Jared answered on the first ring. He sounded completely broken, his voice hoarse from crying and arguing with lawyers all night. “Dad, are you okay? Is the hotel comfortable?”
“Jared,” I said briskly. “I need you to listen to me carefully. Lauren just called my cell phone.”
“What? She called you? I told her not to contact you!”
“She threatened to go to the press,” I told him. “She’s going to spin this as elder neglect on your part to force a massive divorce settlement and drop the fraud investigation.”
There was a long silence on the line. “Oh God,” Jared muttered. “Our public offering is scheduled for next month. If the board sees headline allegations of elder abuse... they’ll remove me as chief executive.”
“Not if we strike first,” I said. “Do you have access to your home network server and the digital records of her personal foundation?”
May you like
“Yes, all the server backups route through my study.”
“Good,” I said, looking at my notes. “Don't hire a divorce attorney yet, Jared. Call a forensic accounting firm. I’m coming over to Lake Forest right now, and we’re going to audit your wife’s entire life.”
