Chapter 7
The glass-walled executive boardroom of Sterling Enterprises felt like a pressure cooker as Julian slammed his palm onto the mahogany table. Across from him sat two senior detectives from the municipal police department, their expressions entirely unimpressed by Julian’s expensive suit and arrogant posturing. The discovery of Clara’s hospital registration earlier that morning had forced the authorities to open a preliminary inquiry into domestic violence allegations. Julian’s chief legal counsel, Marcus, stood quietly in the corner, desperately signaling for Julian to modulate his tone, but the billionaire’s rage was entirely unchecked.
Detective Miller, a seasoned veteran with graying temples and tired eyes, calmly flipped open a leather-bound notebook. He asked Julian to account for his whereabouts between the hours of ten and midnight on the night of the wedding. Julian scoffed, leaning back in his ergonomic leather chair and asserting that his wife had suffered a hysterical episode, tripped over her own formal wear in the lobby, and fled the venue in a state of self-induced paranoia. He painted himself as the victim of a manipulative spouse attempting to fabricate a scandal to secure an unearned financial windfall.
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Detective Vance—unrelated to Aaron, though sharing the same unyielding professional integrity—leaned forward, placing a glossy printed still frame from the venue’s lobby security camera onto the table. The image clearly showed Julian forcefully shoving Clara to the white marble floor, his face twisted in malice. The room fell into an absolute, suffocating silence. Julian’s breath caught in his throat for a fraction of a second before he quickly recovered, dismissing the image as a manipulated deepfake or taken completely out of context during an accidental collision.
Detective Miller did not argue. Instead, he calmly informed Julian that independent witness testimony from Dr. Aaron Vance, combined with physical evidence collected at the scene, corroborated the victim’s timeline of events down to the exact second. Furthermore, the authorities had frozen the offshore transfer initiated earlier that morning, viewing it as an active attempt to flee or obstruct justice. Julian’s facade of untouchable power began to crumble, the cold sweat beading on his forehead betraying his mounting panic. He demanded his lawyer shut down the questioning, but the detectives simply stood up, leaving him with a formal subpoena to appear before a grand jury within forty-eight hours.
