Chapter 4 - The Night of the Crash
The silence in the drafty study was suffocating. Outside, the rain began to beat harder against the old glass panes, a steady, drumming roar that seemed to isolate us from the rest of the world.
"What did you just say?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Dalia straightened up, pulling her shawl tighter around her trembling shoulders. The bravado was gone, replaced by the grim survival instinct of someone who realized the ship was sinking and wanted to make sure she wasn't chained to the mast.
"You think Julian’s biggest crime was financial embezzlement?" Dalia scoffed bitterly. "You're so naive, Khloe. You always were. You thought your father died of a sudden massive stroke in his car on the way to the office, didn't you?"
My breath caught in my throat. The room seemed to tilt slightly.
"The police report said he lost control of his vehicle," I managed to say, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "A heart attack at the wheel."
"The police report said whatever Julian’s corporate lawyers paid them to say," Dalia snapped. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, silver flash drive, holding it up between two fingers like a fragile piece of glass. "Julian didn't cause the crash directly. But he knew your father was driving to the SEC office that night with the original audit ledgers. He called your father twenty minutes before the accident. They argued so violently your father ran off the road into the embankment."
I stared at her, my mind refusing to process the sheer scale of the deception. Two years of grief—two years of blaming myself for not visiting him enough, for being too wrapped up in Julian’s demanding world—and it had all been built on a foundation of murder and cover-ups.
"Where did you get that?" Gabriel asked, his voice dead-and-buried cold as he pointed at the flash drive.
"From Julian’s home office safe," Dalia said, her eyes darting nervously toward the door. "I found it last week when I started realizing he was planning to drop me the second the Vanguard deal went sideways. There are phone logs, GPS data from Julian’s car that night, and recorded voice memos of Julian threatening your father’s pension if he didn't sign over the voting shares."
Gabriel stepped forward, his hand outstretched. "Give it here, Dalia."
She pulled her hand back, clutching the flash drive to her chest. "No. Not until you guarantee me immunity from whatever corporate fraud charges you're about to unleash on Julian. I was just his fiancée. I didn't sign the checks."
"You helped him launder money through three shell companies in the Caymans, Dalia," Gabriel said smoothly, his tone laced with absolute authority. "I saw your signature on the transfer forms when my team audited Duval’s offshore accounts last month. You go down with him, or you hand over the drive right now and let me decide how cooperative you're going to be."
Dalia looked at Gabriel, then looked at me. Her lower lip trembled.
With a soft, defeated sob, she tossed the flash drive onto the walnut desk. It skidded across the wood and came to rest against the edge of the leather ledger.
"Do whatever you want," Dalia whispered, tears finally spilling over her lashes. "Julian’s empire is already gone. He has nothing left. And the second he realizes I took this, he’ll try to kill me."
"He won't have the chance," I said, my voice steady, stripped of all the hesitation and fear that had defined my life with Julian for the past five years. "Because by sunrise, the authorities are going to have every file on this desk."
Gabriel picked up the flash drive, slipping it into his pocket alongside the ledger. He turned to Dalia. "Sit down at that desk and write down every alias Julian used for the offshore accounts. Every name, every bank, every transaction. If you miss a single zero, your deal with me is off."
Dalia sank into the chair without a word, pulling a pen toward her with shaking hands.
I walked over to the open window, looking out into the dark, rain-drenched gardens of my childhood home. My hand rested on my stomach. The baby kicked—a sharp, distinct movement, as if echoing the fierce, sudden clarity burning inside my chest.
Julian thought he had won. He thought he could laugh me off a television screen, humiliate me in front of New York society, and bury my father’s legacy under forged probate documents.
He had no idea what was coming.
"Khloe," Gabriel called softly from across the room.
I turned around. Gabriel was holding his phone, the screen glowing brightly in the dim light of the study.
"We have a problem," he said, his expression grim. "Julian isn't at his apartment. My security team at the gala just pinged his private jet. It cleared flight control ten minutes ago."
"Where is he going?" I asked.
May you like
Gabriel looked up from the screen, his eyes dark. "London. And he didn't fly alone. He took every liquid asset left in the corporate accounts with him—sixteen million dollars wired out of the Sterling Trust thirty minutes before the gala ended."
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