Chapter 8 - Brenda’s Counter-Attack
“You arrogant, ungrateful little bitch!” Brenda’s screeching voice blasted through the phone speaker before I even had a chance to bring it to my ear.
Marcus instinctively reached out to mute the audio, but I shook my head, keeping the phone flat on the conference table so everyone could hear.
“Brenda,” I said, my tone ice-cold and unnervingly calm. “You’re on speaker with my legal team and a municipal magistrate’s representative. I suggest you watch your language.”
Brenda let out a harsh, hysterical laugh from the other end of the line. “You think you’ve won because you got some judge to slap a temporary freeze on Andrew’s accounts? Do you have any idea who you’re messing with? My son is an upstanding architect in this city! You’re the one who abandoned him at the altar! You’re the one who prioritized a stranger’s brat over her own wedding day!”
“That ‘stranger’s brat’ is currently recovering from a ruptured spleen that I repaired with my own hands while your son was busy forging my signature,” I replied, every word dripping with frozen venom. “And as for abandoning him—he was already trying on another woman’s ring before the sun hit noon. Tell Andrew he can explain his corporate shell companies to the federal prosecutor in the morning.”
“You can’t do this to us!” Brenda’s voice suddenly cracked, the venom shifting into a desperate, frantic pleading. “If those accounts stay frozen, the city development board revokes our permits by Monday morning! We’ll lose everything—the firm, the house, the cars! Samantha, please, we were family! We loved you!”
“You loved my inheritance, Brenda,” I said. “Goodbye.”
I hit the red disconnect button.
The phone went dark, casting my reflection against the black glass screen. For a long moment, nobody spoke in the conference room. The clock on the wall ticked softly—1:14 AM.
“She’s right about one thing,” Marcus murmured, breaking the silence. “If the city development board revokes their permits on Monday morning because of the asset freeze, every single dollar of hidden municipal capital in those shell companies is going to trigger an automatic federal grand jury review.”
“Which means Andrew and Brenda aren't just facing civil fraud suits,” Zachary added, standing up and walking toward the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the glittering lights of downtown San Antonio. “They’re looking at federal penitentiary time for wire fraud and public corruption.”
He turned back around, looking directly at me. “Samantha, when the dust settles on this tomorrow morning, Andrew is going to try to cut a deal. He’ll offer to sign over every scrap of the business to you just to keep the federal investigators off his back. What do you want to do with Foster Architecture?”
I stood up slowly, smoothing down the front of my wrinkled, champagne-splattered dress. The clothes felt like a costume from a life I had already outgrown.
May you like
“I don't want his architecture firm, Zachary,” I said, my voice steady and resolute. “I want every cent of my inheritance returned to my personal account, down to the last penny. And then... I want the building renamed.”
---
