Chapter 3 - Unearthing the Past
By 8:00 AM, the sun began to rise over the snowy pines surrounding the estate.
While Claire remained under medical observation at the hospital, David Sloan and I sat in my father’s old study. The room smelled of old leather, pipe tobacco, and polished mahogany—the only place in the entire house that Eleanor had been forbidden to redecorate.
A team of forensic accountants and digital investigators had arrived, going through the safe in the wall behind my father's portrait.
"Ethan," David said, setting a stack of bank statements on the desk. "We’ve started digging into the financial records from the last two years while you were deployed. It’s worse than we thought."
I pulled the documents toward me. "What did they do?"
"The moment your deployment orders were finalized," David explained, pointing to a series of wire transfers, "Eleanor and Natalie began isolating Claire. They cut off her access to the primary joint account you left for her. They told her the army had delayed your paychecks due to a clerical error."
My jaw tightened. "I sent four thousand dollars a month directly to that account. Where did it go?"
"Into a private account Natalie opened in the Cayman Islands," David revealed. "They forced Claire to live off a hundred dollars a week for groceries. Whenever Claire tried to get a job, Natalie contacted the employers, claiming Claire was mentally unstable and using the Vance family name illegally. They effectively rendered her completely dependent and helpless."
Suddenly, one of the digital forensic techs, a young man named Ryan, looked up from his laptop.
"Captain Vance," Ryan called out. "You need to see this. We just bypassed the encryption on the house's internal server. We found deleted email threads between Eleanor Vance and a local real estate developer named Gregory Sterling."
I walked over to the desk, leaning over Ryan’s shoulder.
The emails were dated over six months. Eleanor had been negotiating to sell the entire twenty-acre Vance estate to Sterling’s firm for twelve million dollars.
"She couldn't sell it without my signature or the trustee’s consent," I pointed out.
"Look at the attachments, Captain," Ryan said, clicking on a PDF.
It was a power of attorney document—bearing my forged signature and a fraudulent notary stamp from a crooked attorney in town.
Eleanor had planned to declare me "missing in action" or "incapacitated" using fake military correspondence, sell the estate out from under me, transfer the twelve million dollars into offshore accounts, and leave Claire stranded with nothing.
"They weren't just abusing her, Ethan," David whispered, his face dark with fury. "They were trying to destroy both of your lives permanently before you ever made it back from the desert."
"Who was the notary?" I asked, my voice dropping into a dangerous whisper.
"A man named Marcus Vance—your father’s cousin," Ryan replied. "He received a fifty-thousand-dollar kickback from Sterling’s firm last month."
I stood up, adjusting my uniform jacket. "David, call the District Attorney. Tell him we aren't just filing assault charges. We are filing charges for grand larceny, forgery, conspiracy to commit fraud, and treasonous theft against an active-duty service member under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act."
"The federal government takes SCRA violations very seriously," David smiled grimly. "If the federal prosecutor picks this up, Eleanor, Natalie, and Marcus won't just be looking at state prison. They’ll be facing federal penitentiary time."
"Good," I said, turning toward the door. "Make sure the press gets the documents."
May you like
David raised an eyebrow. "The press?"
"Eleanor lived her entire life for her social standing," I replied coldly. "She loved the charity galas, the country club luncheons, and the fake prestige of the Vance name. It's time the entire city knows exactly who she really is."
