Chapter 4 - The Locked Office
Corinne knew the answer lay in her locked home office. Under the guise of retrieving her military uniforms for a supposed return to duty, Rachel secured a court order forcing Ross to allow Corinne back into the house for two hours, accompanied by a police escort.
Ross stood by the front door, arms crossed, trying to mask his panic as Corinne marched straight to the home office. He had changed the electronic keypad, but he had forgotten that Corinne had designed the home's smart-security network herself. She bypassed the lock using a master reset key she kept on her encrypted military flash drive.
The door clicked open.
Inside, the room was a mess of paperwork. Ross and Gwendolyn had been using Corinne's secure computer. Because Corinne held high-level Department of Defense security clearance, she had access to a highly secured network that managed defense contractor logistics.
Corinne pulled out her flash drive, booted the system into safe mode, and ran a quick diagnostic log. Ross and Gwendolyn hadn't just been playing house—they had been stealing.
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Using Corinne’s digital signature, which Ross had forged, they had authorized massive fraudulent loans against Corinne’s military pension. Worse, Gwendolyn had been using Corinne's identity to siphon funds from a defense contractor's escrow account, routing the money into offshore shell companies.
If Corinne had simply come home and divorced Ross, an audit would have exposed the theft, and Ross would go to prison. But if Corinne was committed to a psychiatric facility, or convicted of domestic abuse and stripped of her security clearance and credibility, Ross and Gwendolyn could claim she committed the fraud during a mental breakdown, take the money, and keep the house.
