Chapter 5 - The Recorded Dinner
At four o'clock that afternoon, my phone rang. It was James.
I let it ring three times before picking up. "Hello, James."
"Claire!" he gasped, sounding like a man drowning. "Oh thank God you answered! Claire, baby, please let me see you. I’m at the house. I haven't slept in thirty-six hours. My mother is out of her mind, the board is calling emergency meetings—I don't care about any of it! I only care about you!"
"I'm at my apartment, James," I said, keeping my tone carefully measured, sounding exhausted and defeated. "I'm overwhelmed. The press won't leave my street."
"I'll come over! No, let's meet somewhere private," James pleaded. "The private room at The Hermitage Grill. Just thirty minutes, Claire. Give me thirty minutes to explain everything without my mother hovering over us."
"Okay," I whispered. "Thirty minutes. Just you and me."
The Hermitage Grill was an exclusive, white-cloth restaurant downtown where the city's political and financial elite held discreet dinners. When I walked into the private back room at seven o'clock, James was already waiting. He had three empty whisky glasses on the table in front of him.
He stood up immediately, stepping toward me with open arms. "Claire—"
I held up my hand, stopping him. "Sit down, James."
I wore a dark blazer over a silk blouse. Hidden beneath the lapel of my blazer was a state-of-the-art micro-recording device provided by Ethan Vance’s legal team. Tennessee was a one-party consent state for audio recording; as long as I was part of the conversation, every word James said was fully admissible in a court of law.
James sat down heavily, burying his face in his hands. "I know how awful yesterday looked, Claire. But you have to understand my position. My mother... she controls every aspect of Miller Development. She told me six years ago that if I claimed those kids, she would write me out of the family trust completely."
"So you just abandoned them?" I asked, sitting down across from him. "You abandoned Hannah while she was carrying your second child?"
"I was twenty-four!" James argued defensively, leaning over the table. "I panicked! Hannah was getting demanding, her father had just died, and the company was in chaos. My mother told me she would take care of Hannah financially if I just walked away and focused on building the brand."
"Taking care of her?" I mocked softly. "She gave her a fifty-thousand-dollar gag order while you took seventy percent of her father's company!"
James waved his hand dismissively. "Richard Vance was dying anyway! His company was going under! We saved Vance Properties from bankruptcy! Okay, fine, maybe the paperwork wasn't entirely clean, but we turned it into a multi-hundred-million-dollar empire! Hannah’s father would have been proud of what we built!"
"So you did forge your signature on the Vance assets?" I asked, my voice calm, steering the conversation carefully.
"My mother’s lawyers handled the signatures!" James blurted out, taking another gulp of whisky. "I just signed where they told me to sign! I didn't steal anything, Claire! I preserved it! And now Hannah shows up with terminal cancer, using those kids as leverage to ruin my life!"
"They are your children, James," I said, staring at him in disbelief at his complete lack of empathy. "They aren't leverage. They're human beings."
"They are an obstacle!" James snapped. "Look at what happened! You walked out on me! The board is threatening to remove me as CEO! The press is calling us monsters! All because some dying woman couldn't keep her mouth shut!"
He reached across the table, trying to grab my hands. His eyes were wild. "Claire, you're a judge's daughter. You understand how the world works. Power requires sacrifices. We can put those kids in a good boarding school in New England—I'll pay for everything! We can put this behind us, get married quietly in Europe, and take over the company together!"
I slowly pulled my hands away from his grasp.
I reached up to my lapel, unclipped the tiny silver microphone, and laid it softly on the white tablecloth between his whisky glass and his dinner plate.
James froze. He stared at the little device, the blood completely draining from his face.
"What... what is that?" he whispered.
"That, James," I said, standing up and buttoning my blazer, "is your complete, recorded confession to corporate fraud, conspiracy, and child abandonment."
"Claire!" James shrieked, knocking his chair over as he scrambled around the table to grab the device.
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The doors to the private room swung open. Two federal agents from the financial crimes unit, accompanied by Ethan Vance and my father, stepped into the room.
"James Miller," the lead agent announced, pulling out a pair of steel handcuffs. "You are under arrest for federal bank fraud, wire fraud, and grand larceny."
