Chapter 6 - Sienna's Desperate Move
Deprived of his corporate salary, suspended from his firm, and evicted from my home, Logan moved into Sienna’s two-bedroom apartment across town.
Unsurprisingly, the golden romance they had envisioned quickly turned into a war zone.
On Thursday morning, while I was dropping Emma off at her elementary school, a sleek red convertible pulled up beside my SUV, blocking my exit from the school parking lot.
Sienna got out, wearing oversized designer sunglasses and a tight trench coat. She looked exhausted, dark circles visible beneath her makeup.
She walked directly to my driver-side window and tapped sharply on the glass.
I lowered the window three inches. "You're blocking traffic, Sienna."
"We need to talk, Camille," she said, her tone no longer arrogant, but sharp and frantic. "You need to pull back the state audit charges against Logan."
"I don't control federal and state financial prosecutions, Sienna," I said calmly. "Once a tax fraud trail is flagged, the prosecutor takes over."
"You know damn well you pushed them to do it!" Sienna yelled, stepping closer to the door. "Logan's entire career is gone! They froze his accounts! They froze my accounts!"
"Your accounts were frozen because you accepted stolen escrow money from a real estate development firm," I reminded her. "That makes you a co-conspirator to grand larceny."
Sienna’s jaw worked silently. She took off her sunglasses, her eyes filled with desperation. "I didn't know where the money came from! Logan told me it was his quarterly bonus! He told me you were holding all his money hostage in your family trust!"
"And did he tell you to send your sister into my house to break into my private safe?" I asked.
Sienna flinched. She looked around the busy school parking lot, where other parents were staring at us.
"Look," Sienna whispered, leaning close to the window slit. "I don't care about Logan anymore. He’s a mess. He's drinking every night, screaming at Mason, and blaming me for everything. I just want my name cleared. If I give you everything Logan hid in his secondary cloud drive—his private ledger, his real estate kickbacks—will you tell the prosecutor I was just an innocent bystander?"
I looked at her with cold pity. "You weren't an innocent bystander when you stood beside my daughter's birthday cake and tried to strip her name off it, Sienna. You enjoyed trying to replace me. You wanted my home, my lifestyle, and my status."
"I was stupid!" Sienna cried out, tears smearing her mascara. "He promised me everything! He said you were a cold, emotionless auditor who didn't love him!"
"I am an auditor, Sienna," I said, rolling up my window. "And my calculations are always exact. Move your car before I call the school resource officer."
Sienna stared at me through the glass, her face contorted in rage and helplessness. Realizing I would offer her no lifeline, she turned, rushed back to her convertible, and sped out of the parking lot, squealing her tires against the asphalt.
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I watched her drive away in my rearview mirror.
She had tried to steal my life, only to realize that the man she fought so hard to win was nothing more than an anchor pulling her down into the deep end of a federal crime.
