Chapter 7: Shadows in the Boardroom
The executive boardroom on the forty-second floor of the Moretti Tower looked like a war room abandoned in haste. Piled on the mahogany table were three months of unpaid catering invoices, canceled board meeting minutes, and the grim notices of default sent by commercial lenders who had suddenly realized Victoria’s collateral was tied up in federal litigation. I stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, looking down at the crawling streams of downtown traffic below, waiting for the only person left who could unlock the final digital archive.
The heavy double doors clicked open, and Julian Vance stepped inside. Once Victoria’s chief legal strategist and her most fiercely loyal defender, Julian looked ten years older than he had at the preliminary hearing. His tie was loosened, his hair slightly disheveled, and he carried a single encrypted flash drive pinched between his thumb and forefinger.
"You're making a massive mistake coming here without your lawyer, Dante," Julian said, his voice lacking its usual courtroom bite. He walked over to the table and dropped the flash drive onto the polished wood with a dry clack.
"And you're making the right choice by showing up," I replied, turning away from the window and walking slowly toward him. "The audit is expanding, Julian. If you were just following orders, that's one thing. But if your signature is on the falsified copyright filings submitted to the Library of Congress in 2019, you're looking at federal wire fraud."
Julian flinched, pulling out a leather chair and sitting down heavily. He rubbed his temples, staring at the small blinking light on the flash drive. "She promised me a partnership. She said Elena was dead, her music was rotting in a desk drawer, and that someone needed to monetize it before the estate went bankrupt. I didn't think anyone would ever look close enough to trace the provenance back to a private trust."
"Elena wasn't just a composer to me, Julian. She was my wife, and Lily’s mother," I said, my tone remaining low and steady, stripped of anger. "Victoria thought she could erase a human life just by changing the name on a title page. But art has a way of outliving the people who try to steal it."
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Julian pushed the flash drive across the table toward me. "Everything is on there. Every original digital stem, every uncompressed recording, and the unedited ledger showing how Victoria funneled foundation grants into her personal offshore accounts. Use it wisely, Dante. Because once I hand this over, I’m getting on a plane to Zurich and I’m never coming back."
I picked up the drive, feeling its cold metal surface against my palm. "Just make sure you're reachable if the federal prosecutor needs a corroborating witness. The truth is coming out, Julian, whether you're here to watch or not."
