Chapter 7 - The Ledger of Sins
Mr. Vance looked like a man standing on the edge of an active volcano. He held out the top ledger, his hands trembling slightly as the wind whipped across the lake.
Genevieve’s composure finally shattered completely. The color drained from her face, leaving her skin the chalky shade of old parchment.
"Vance," Genevieve snapped, her voice losing its polished veneer and rising into a sharp, panicked command. "You forget your place. Step away from my son this instant."
"I work for the CEO, Madam Genevieve," Vance replied quietly, refusing to look her in the eye as he handed the folder directly to me. "And the CEO just ordered a forensic audit of every family trust fund and subsidiary foundation managed under your authority."
I opened the folder. The pages were dense with wire transfers, shell-company shell games, and offshore routing numbers. My eyes scanned the columns until they landed on a series of transactions executed six years ago—right around the time Rosalind had vanished.
"What is this?" I demanded, holding the paper up so the winter light caught the text. "You didn't just pay her off or threaten her, Mother. You liquidated four million dollars from a dormant youth charity endowment fund registered under my late father’s name... and funneled it into an untraceable Swiss account."
Gasps erupted from the doorway behind us. Several members of the regional charity committee had quietly drifted out onto the porch, catching the tail end of my words.
"Christopher, stop this foolishness immediately," Genevieve hissed, lunging forward to swat the folder out of my hands.
I sidestepped her easily, my grip tightening on the documents. "You used my father’s legacy to fund a slush fund. Half of it was used to buy the silence of the private investigators who tracked Rosalind’s apartment lease, and the other half..." I looked down at the subsequent pages, a sickening realization washing over me. "...was used to set up a dummy corporation designed to sabotage her credit rating so she couldn't rent a home anywhere in the Midwest."
Rosalind gasped softly behind me, her hands flying to her mouth. "That's why... that's why every apartment application I submitted after I left Minneapolis was mysteriously rejected. Even when I had the deposit, landlords called back saying my background check flagged a federal fraud alert."
I turned my furious gaze back to my mother. The woman who had lectured me on honor, tradition, and family legacy for four decades was nothing more than a common criminal hiding behind a designer coat and a philanthropic smile.
"You didn't just push her away," I said, my voice trembling with a terrifying intensity. "You hunted her. You tried to starve her out."
"I did what was necessary to preserve the Kane name!" Genevieve shrieked, finally dropping the mask entirely as the socialites on the porch stared at her in abject horror. "You were destined for global expansion, Christopher! Not tied down to a penniless nobody with no pedigree!"
"I am the Kane name," I whispered, stepping so close to her she had to lean back against the mahogany door. "And as of right now, you are officially stripped of every executive title, every board seat, and every residential privilege associated with this estate."
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Before Genevieve could scream an objection, two local police cruisers—summoned automatically by Vance’s compliance protocol upon discovering the charity embezzlement—swung up the gravel driveway with their sirens silent, pulling to a sharp halt right behind our SUV.
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