Chapter 3 - Secrets of Cedar Ridge
Ethan Vance—no relation to Victoria, but one of the sharpest corporate attorneys and private investigators on the West Coast—had my complete profile within six hours.
By 6:00 AM the following morning, while Nathan was still asleep in the master bedroom, I met Ethan in a shadowed corner of a quiet diner in Bellevue. Outside, the rain had tapered off into a thick, gray fog.
Ethan slid a thick manila folder across the booth table toward me.
"Your husband is deeper in debt than you realized, Audrey," Ethan began, sipping his black coffee. "He’s been embezzling from Caldwell Pacific Freight to cover bad investments in offshore cryptocurrency schemes. He’s down nearly fourteen million dollars. If the board conducts the annual audit next month, he’s going to federal prison for fraud."
"Which is why he needs me dead," I said quietly, skimming the financial records. "If I die in an accidental fall, my personal estate passes to him. Plus, there's the five-million-dollar life insurance policy he persuaded me to take out last year."
"Precisely," Ethan said. "And there's more. I looked into the adoption of Emma from Cedar Ridge Children’s Home in Montana."
I looked up, my eyes narrowing. "What about it?"
"Nathan didn't adopt Emma out of charity or paternal instinct," Ethan revealed. "Cedar Ridge was built on land owned by a subsidiary of Caldwell Pacific. Nathan visited the home six months ago to finalize a land acquisition. Emma overheard him and Victoria Vance discussing the offshore accounts inside the director's office."
My hand tightened around my coffee cup. "He knew she was in the room?"
"He didn't realize she was listening until later," Ethan explained. "When he realized the girl was hyper-observant, he panicked. He thought about transferring her to another state, but then he came up with a darker idea: adopt her, bring her under his roof, and if she ever spoke up, paint her as a traumatized, hallucinating child. He used her as his insurance policy to bolster the narrative that your household was crumbling under psychological stress."
A cold rage washed over me. Nathan hadn't just targeted me; he had weaponized a helpless, traumatized child to cover his tracks and pave the way for my murder.
"He targeted the wrong mother," I whispered.
"What's the plan?" Ethan asked, leaning in. "We can reveal your 70% controlling stake in Aegis Capital right now, freeze his access, and fire him before lunch."
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"No," I replied, a slow, lethal smile touching my lips. "If we just fire him, he gets away with attempted murder. He’ll hide behind corporate lawyers and blame Victoria. I want him ruined completely. I want him caught red-handed, under the full light of the law."
I closed the file. "Tonight is the night he scheduled my 'accident.' We let him proceed—right into the trap."
