Chapter 10
Arthur Pendelton collapsed onto the kitchen chair Marcus offered him, accepting a paper cup of black coffee with trembling hands. He looked over his shoulder nervously, as if expecting federal agents—or worse, Sterling security contractors—to burst through the windows at any moment.
"Julian didn't just embezzle funds," Arthur began, his voice barely above a whisper. "He authorized the diversion of high-grade titanium plating intended for frontline transport vehicles, replacing it with sub-standard alloy sourced from an unverified overseas supplier. He pocketed the difference while the surplus was marked as classified waste."
Clara felt a cold knot form in her stomach. "That explains why David's vehicle failed during field testing," she said, the realization hitting with brutal clarity. "It wasn't a mechanical malfunction. The armor plate sheared apart because it was made of inferior metal."
"General Sterling knew about it from day one," Arthur confirmed, taking a desperate gulp of coffee. "When David found the discrepancy in the warehouse inventory logs and threatened to report it directly to the Inspector General, Julian didn't know what to do. It was Beatrice who gave the final order. She called it a 'necessary casualty for operational security.' They staged the accident on the testing track to make it look like driver error."
Marcus stared at the CFO, his jaw tightening into a hard line. "You have physical proof of this? Audio recordings, emails, or signed directives?"
Arthur reached into his waterlogged leather briefcase and pulled out a heavy encrypted thumb drive, placing it gently on the table. "Everything. Every encrypted email thread, every offshore routing confirmation, and the digital recording of the board meeting where Beatrice signed off on David's reassignment to the test track. I downloaded it from Julian's private terminal thirty minutes before the federal raid."
Clara picked up the thumb drive, feeling the weight of the tiny piece of plastic. It was the smoking gun they needed to upgrade the charges against Beatrice and Julian from white-collar fraud to premeditated murder and high treason. The legal defenses the family's high-priced lawyers had been constructing would evaporate the moment this drive was decrypted in front of a federal judge.
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"Why bring this to us now, Arthur?" Marcus asked suspiciously. "You were part of the inner circle for years. You profited off their corruption just like the rest of them."
Arthur looked down at his hands, his expression hollow. "Because I have a son currently deployed overseas, driving transport trucks fitted with those exact same defective components. When I realized what my silence was costing other people's children—the same way David lost his life—I couldn't live with it anymore. Put them away, Agent Vance. Put them all away."
