Chapter 6 - Following the Paper Trail
For weeks, Sarah and I dissected my life.
Every signature, every bank transfer, every tax document from the last three years was placed under a microscope.
The brilliance of Evan and Diane's scheme was its banality. They didn't steal large sums at once. They bled the accounts slowly, moving five thousand here, ten thousand there, classifying them as "consulting fees," "property management expenses," and "investment diversifications."
Diane was the mastermind. She had a background in corporate law that she had never fully utilized—until she saw my inheritance.
She had set up a dummy corporation in the Cayman Islands. She had forged my signature on power of attorney documents. Evan was merely the enforcer, the charming husband keeping me distracted while his mother robbed me blind.
"They used a portion of your money to buy a yacht registered under Diane's maiden name," Sarah revealed, pointing to a highlighted line item. "And another two hundred thousand was funneled into Evan's failed startup, which he claimed was funded by an angel investor."
The anger that had been simmering inside me since the hospital solidified into cold, hard steel.
They hadn't just tried to kill me to silence me. They had tried to kill me so they could inherit whatever was left. If I had died that night, Evan would have played the grieving widower, collected the life insurance, and walked away a millionaire.
I gave Sarah every password, every key, every piece of mail I had ever saved.
By the time the trial date arrived, the DA didn't just have an attempted murder case. They had a federal wire fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering case that was going to put both Evan and Diane away for decades.
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I bought a new suit for the trial. Dark navy, sharply tailored. High collar.
I wasn't going to hide the faint scars on my neck, but I wasn't going to let them define me either. I was going to walk into that courtroom not as a victim, but as their executioner.
