Chapter 5 - The Mistress's Mistake
At 3:00 PM on Boxing Day, I received an unexpected visitor at my temporary executive suite downtown.
I opened the door to find Vanessa Cole standing in the hallway. She looked radically different from the polished, airbrushed pictures I had found on her social media profiles. She was wearing a faded trench coat, her designer mascara was smudged beneath her wide, panicked eyes, and she was clutching an expensive Birkin bag to her chest like a shield.
"Victoria?" she asked, her voice trembling.
I stood in the doorway, my arms crossed, evaluating her without a shred of emotion. "Miss Cole. You're far from your downtown penthouse."
"Please," she choked out, looking around the hallway as if she expected federal agents to leap out from the shadows. "Can I please speak with you for five minutes? Just five minutes. Please."
I stepped back and allowed her into the living room, leaving the front door slightly ajar. "You have three minutes."
Vanessa turned to me, her hands shaking violently as she set her bag down on the glass coffee table. "I didn't know! I swear to God, Victoria, I had no idea!"
"You had no idea that the married man renting you an eight-thousand-dollar-a-month apartment was using stolen funds?" I asked sarcastically.
"He told me he was wealthy!" she sobbed, pressing her hands to her face. "He told me he was a venture capitalist! He told me you were an abusive, cold woman who was draining his business dry, and that he was just trying to protect his personal assets before filing for divorce!"
I chuckled softly—a dry, bitter sound. "David lied to you, Vanessa. David doesn't have a dime to his name. Everything he spent on you—the trips, the jewelry, the apartment, the dinners—was stolen directly from my personal pre-marital bank account."
Vanessa pulled a stack of legal documents from her bag—the asset clawback summons served on her earlier that morning. "They came to my apartment today! They froze my personal checking account! They told me if I don't surrender the car David leased for me and return all the jewelry within forty-eight hours, I'll be named as a co-conspirator in a federal wire fraud indictment!"
"That sounds entirely accurate," I replied coolly.
"I don't have money for a defense lawyer, Victoria!" she wailed, sinking onto the edge of the sofa. "I'm twenty-six years old! I worked as a low-level boutique stylist before I met David at a trade show six months ago! I can't go to prison!"
I walked over to the desk, pulled out a notepad and a pen, and set them down in front of her.
"Then you are going to make a choice right now, Vanessa," I said, leaning over the table and staring directly into her eyes. "You can either protect a pathetic, broke coward who used you as a pawn to hide his theft, or you can cooperate."
Vanessa looked up, wiping a tear from her cheek. "Cooperate how?"
"David used your messaging apps to send you confirmation receipts and wire transfer details," I said. "He told you explicitly in text messages where the money was coming from, didn't he? He boasted about getting past my oversight."
Vanessa swallowed hard, her jaw quivering. "He... he sent me voice notes. Dozens of them. Bragging about how his sister Melanie was helping him bypass bank security, and how his father Richard was showing him how to run money through offshore accounts so you'd never see it in a divorce settlement."
A surge of cold satisfaction washed through me. Voice notes. The arrogant fool had recorded audio confessions of his own criminal conspiracy.
"Pull out your phone," I commanded. "Upload every single chat log, audio file, and receipt to this secure drive."
I dropped an encrypted memory stick onto the table.
Vanessa didn't hesitate for a single second. She unlocked her phone with trembling fingers and began transferring the files immediately.
"If I give you all of this," she whispered, looking up at me desperately, "will you drop the civil clawback against my personal accounts?"
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"I will instruct my legal team to grant you full immunity from civil liability," I promised smoothly. "Provided every word you just told me is verified by those audio files."
Ten minutes later, Vanessa Cole walked out of my hotel suite, leaving behind the final nail in the Hale family's coffin.
