Chapter 6 - The Phantom Partner
The dial tone droned in my ear, flat and unyielding, cutting off Elena Vance’s voice before she could utter the final, crucial name. His name is—
I sat frozen in the driver's seat under the oak tree on Elm Street, my tablet still glowing with the audited wire-transfer receipts from three years ago. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Money earmarked for my education, my independence, my future, diverted directly into the maw of Oakridge Ventures LLC while my mother watched me scrape together tuition dollars and work three jobs.
My chest felt hollow, yet a strange, cold focus settled over my thoughts. The mystery was no longer a vague cloud of sibling entitlement and suburban debt. It had a structure, a history, and a human architect.
I started the car and drove straight back to my apartment. I didn't want to talk to my mother, and I certainly didn't want to field another frantic call from attorney Richard Sterling. I needed to see the data myself—raw, unredacted, and unshielded by family lies.
Back at my kitchen table, I bypassed the standard public portals and logged into my firm’s secure internal compliance archive using my senior auditor credentials. If Oakridge Ventures was tied to my father’s former business partner—the man who bought out his shares the week before he died—the transaction trail would be embedded in old corporate dissolution records filed with the state department of revenue.
I typed in my father’s full name: Arthur Prescott.
The screen populated with a cascade of archived microfiche scans, partnership dissolutions, and asset assignment agreements from late 2012. I scrolled past the boilerplate legal language, my eyes scanning the signatures at the bottom of the final asset transfer sheet.
There was my father’s signature. Beside it was the signature of the primary managing partner who had bought out his minority stake in the commercial real estate portfolio just days before my father’s sudden passing.
The name printed below the signature line hit me like a physical blow: Victor Vance.
I blinked, staring at the screen. Vance.
Detective Vance from the Oakridge Police Department. And Elena Vance, Nathan’s ex-fiancée.
It wasn't a coincidence. It was a dynasty.
The pieces clicked together with terrifying clarity. Victor Vance wasn't just a random business partner from a decade ago; he was the patriarch of the local legal and law enforcement apparatus that had kept my family afloat—or rather, kept them bound—for over ten years. If Victor Vance had bought out my father's shares right before his death under questionable valuations, and my mother had subsequently funneled millions from the family trust into Oakridge Ventures, then Oakridge Ventures wasn't just my brother's failed startup. It was a joint venture between Victor Vance and my mother, engineered to siphon the estate away from me before I ever realized I had a claim.
And Detective Vance, his son or nephew, was currently sitting in the local precinct managing the "investigation" into my brother’s forged loan. Was he genuinely pursuing Nathan, or was he managing the fallout to protect the greater enterprise?
Before I could process the full implications of the connection, my cell phone buzzed on the kitchen table. It wasn't an unknown number this time. It was an incoming call from Detective Vance himself.
I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over the green accept button. My heart hammered against my ribs, but the paralyzing fear I used to feel around authority figures was entirely gone, replaced by a sharp, calculating resolve.
I swiped to answer and brought the phone to my ear.
"Miss Prescott," Detective Vance's steady, professional voice came through the speaker. "I'm calling with an update regarding the search warrants executed on the Oakridge Ventures corporate offices this morning. We recovered the secondary ledgers you mentioned."
"Did you?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm. "Which ledgers, Detective? The ones listing my mother as a minority stakeholder, or the ones detailing the primary buyout agreements signed by Victor Vance back in 2012?"
A heavy, dead silence dropped over the line. The professional warmth in Vance's voice vanished instantly, replaced by a guarded, sharp edge.
"It sounds like you've been doing some deep archiving, Miss Prescott," Vance said quietly.
"It's amazing what you find when you stop believing family fairy tales," I replied, standing up from the kitchen table and pacing across the room. "Tell me, Detective, does your department usually handle asset diversion cases where your own family name is plastered across the primary corporate filings?"
"My uncle Victor has been retired from active commercial development for years, Miss Prescott," Vance countered, his tone hardening. "Whatever business arrangements he had with your father over a decade ago are entirely separate from the federal wire fraud your brother committed last week. Mr. Nathan Prescott forged your signature on a commercial loan. That is an open-and-shut criminal matter, regardless of past estate grievances."
"Is it?" I challenged, my grip tightening around the phone. "Because from where I'm sitting, Nathan's little stunt wasn't an isolated crime of desperation. It was a clumsy attempt to access funds from a well that you and your family have been drawing from for years. You aren't just investigating the case, Detective. You're trying to contain it before the grand jury sees the 2012 dissolution papers."
"You are playing a very dangerous game, Miss Prescott," Vance said, his voice dropping into a low, warning register. "You think exposing everybody brings you justice. But when the dust settles, you'll find out that some doors are better left locked—because the people behind them won't just lose their money; they'll make sure you lose everything else."
The line clicked dead.
I stood in the center of my apartment, the dial tone ringing softly in the empty room. He hadn't denied the connection. He had threatened me.
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And for the first time, I knew exactly what my next move had to be. I wasn't going to call the police back, and I wasn't going to negotiate with my mother. I was going to walk straight into Victor Vance’s office tomorrow morning and hand my evidence directly to the federal prosecutor's field office downtown.
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