Chapter 4
The heavy steel door of the interrogation room clicked shut behind the departing agents, leaving Sarafina alone with the humming fluorescent lights and the weight of the missing millions. Ten minutes later, the door swung open again, but this time it wasn't the federal investigators. A tall, impeccably dressed woman in a charcoal gray pantsuit stepped into the room, her silver-streaked hair pulled back into a severe bun. She carried a sleek leather briefcase, setting it down on the metal table with deliberate calm.
“My name is Victoria Sterling,” the woman said, pulling out the chair opposite Sarafina without waiting for an invitation. “And before you ask, no, I don't represent Julian, nor am I affiliated with the federal task force.”
Sarafina narrowed her eyes, rubbing her wrists where the steel cuffs had left angry red impressions.
“If you’re not federal and you’re not part of Julian’s legal team, then why are you sitting across from me in a holding cell?” Sarafina demanded, her exhaustion momentarily giving way to sharp suspicion.
Victoria opened her briefcase and slid a single sheet of heavy parchment across the table. It was an old legal document bearing a wax seal Sarafina recognized instantly—the crest of the original Greenfield shipping conglomerate founded by her grandfather fifty years ago.
“Because the eighty-two million dollars Julian stole wasn't just foundation money,” Victoria said softly, her piercing blue eyes locking onto Sarafina’s. “It was the liquidation threshold of an active trust that activates only when the primary heir faces corporate ruin or wrongful imprisonment.”
Sarafina stared at the document, her breath catching in her throat. “My grandfather dissolved that trust twenty years ago. My father told me the accounts were empty.”
“Your father had to make you believe that to protect you from the people who murdered him,” Victoria stated flatly, the words landing like a physical blow in the small, sterile room.
The silence that followed was heavy and absolute. Sarafina felt the room tilt on its axis. Her father’s sudden death three years prior had been officially ruled a heart attack, a tragic accident in his private study. She had never questioned the autopsy report, too consumed by grief to look deeper into the business affairs he had left behind.
“My father wasn't killed by a failing heart,” Sarafina whispered, the horror dawning on her in agonizing waves.
“He was poisoned with a slow-acting heavy metal compound, administered over six months by the very person he hired as his chief financial consultant,” Victoria replied, leaning forward. “A man who went by a different name back then. A man who now calls himself Julian Vance.”
Sarafina stood up so fast her chair screeched against the concrete floor, the cuffs rattling violently.
“Julian didn't just steal from my foundation,” she choked out, tears finally breaking through her stoic resolve. “He murdered my father to get to the trust, and he married me to finish clearing the accounts.”
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Victoria calmly closed her briefcase and stood up, offering a chilling final warning.
“The federal agents think Julian outsmarted them by moving the money offshore, but he didn't offshore it, Sarafina. He deposited it into an account that belongs exclusively to the Greenfield estate’s primary shareholder—which, according to this newly unearthed charter, is currently registered under your name.”
