Chapter 4 - The Broadcast
I picked up the phone. My thumb hovered over the screen before I pressed play.
The video was shot in the lobby of our downtown loft building. Dominic was standing in front of the elevators, his tie loosened, his hair disheveled, looking directly into the camera with an expression of manic disbelief. Behind him, two moving men were carrying a stack of cardboard boxes toward the exit.
“Audrey, if this is your idea of a joke, it’s gone too far,” Dominic said, his voice echoing in the marble lobby. “The locks are changed. My keycards don't work. The management office says the lease was terminated by court order. My investors are calling me every five minutes because Sterling-Vance is threatening to pull our funding. What did you do?”
He took a step closer to the camera, his composure completely fracturing.
“Who are you talking to? Who is helping you do this? You’re just Audrey. You taught art history at a community college. You don’t have lawyers like this. You don’t have federal marshals.”
He paused, breathing heavily, running a hand through his hair.
“If you come home right now—right now—I’ll pretend none of this happened. We can go to dinner. We can drop this whole absurd victim act. But if you don't answer my call in the next ten minutes, I am going to the press. I’m going to tell everyone how my unstable wife abandoned our newborn child to pull some kind of malicious financial stunt.”
The video ended.
I looked up at my father. He was watching me closely, reading every micro-expression on my face.
“He’s threatening to go to the press,” I said.
“Let him,” my father said without hesitation. “A disgraced venture capitalist with pending SEC fraud charges trying to smear his wife to the tabloids? The public relations fallout will destroy what little credibility he has left before he even reaches the lobby of a newspaper office.”
“He thinks I’m weak, Dad,” I said softly. “Even now, watching his life fall apart, he still thinks I’m the woman who sat quietly in the passenger seat and thanked him for twelve dollars.”
“Then let him keep thinking it until the trap closes,” my father replied.
He stood up, walked to the liquor cabinet, and poured two glasses of sparkling water, handing one to me.
“There is something else you need to know,” my father added, his tone shifting from professional detachment to something heavier. “When I pulled Dominic’s corporate files this morning, I didn’t just find financial irregularities. I found a wire transfer from six months ago. Fifty thousand dollars, sent from Dominic’s personal account to an address in Georgetown.”
I frowned, taking the glass. “Georgetown? Who is in Georgetown?”
“An accountant named Marcus Vance. Arthur Vance’s estranged nephew.”
“What does Dominic have to do with Arthur’s nephew?”
“That fifty-thousand-dollar transfer wasn’t a business expense,” my father said, leaning against the edge of the desk. “It was a hush payment. Tied to a company that was dissolved the week before you and Dominic got married.”
The coldness in the room seemed to deepen.
“What kind of company?” I asked.
“A shell corporation that acquired the land your mother’s family estate was built on—before it was seized through eminent domain twenty years ago.”
My breath caught in my throat. My mother’s estate had been lost in a complex legal battle shortly before she passed away—a tragedy my family had never fully discussed.
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“Dominic didn't just stumble into your life by accident, Audrey,” my father said quietly. “He knew who you were before you even met him.”
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