Chapter 8 - The Interrogation of the Intern
The rain had cleared by late afternoon, leaving the streets of Boston slick and reflecting the bruised purple of a November dusk. I was sitting in a corner booth of a quiet café on Newbury Street when the brass bell above the door chimed and Chloe walked in. She looked entirely different from the girl in the white wool coat at Harrow & Stone. Her designer bag was gone, replaced by a simple canvas tote, and her hair was pulled back into a messy knot without a trace of the curated perfection that had once made my blood boil.
She spotted me, hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then walked over with stiff, defensive steps, sliding into the vinyl booth opposite me.
"You ruined my apartment lease," Chloe said, her voice shaking with a mixture of fear and teenage indignation. "The landlord served me an eviction notice this morning because the credit card backing the security deposit was declined and permanently flagged."
"I didn't ruin your lease, Chloe," I said calmly, stirring a cube of sugar into my black coffee. "Caleb did. He rented that apartment with a line of credit secured against my personal trust. Since that money belonged to me, reclaiming it isn't malicious—it’s legally retrieving stolen property."
"He told me his wife was a distant figure, that you lived separate lives, that the divorce was already finalized in everything but name," she muttered, her eyes dropping to the scratched surface of the table. "He said the necklace was just a small token of appreciation for closing the downtown acquisition deal."
"There was no acquisition deal," I replied, leaning forward so my voice remained low and steady. "It was a shell company designed to siphon funds into his personal gambling accounts. You weren't an architectural intern helping with a corporate merger, Chloe. You were an expensive decoration meant to stroke his fragile ego while he looted my mother’s legacy."
Chloe flinched, the harsh reality finally piercing through the bubble of delusion Caleb had built for her. "I didn't know about the trust. I swear to God, I thought he was just a wealthy developer."
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"I know you didn't," I said, sliding a thick manila envelope across the table. "Which is why I’m not naming you as a co-conspirator in the federal financial fraud filings. Inside that envelope is a copy of every text message, email, and receipt Caleb sent you over the last six months. The state investigators are going to want a complete timeline of his expenditures. If you hand this over voluntarily tomorrow morning, your name stays out of the public record, and you can walk away from this mess with your clean slate intact."
She stared at the envelope as if it were radioactive, her breath hitching in her throat. Slowly, with trembling fingers, she reached across the table, pulled the envelope toward her, and clutched it to her chest.
