Chapter 3 - The Cold War at Rourke Manor
For the next three days, I played the meek, broken wife. I let Caleb bring me back to Rourke Manor. I let Diane treat me like an ungrateful charity case who should be thankful for a roof over my head.
"You need to sign this waiver, Clara," Caleb said on Tuesday morning, slamming a document onto my nightstand alongside my breakfast tray. "It acknowledges that the twenty-three thousand was a voluntary gift to the Rourke Family Trust to settle joint marital expenses."
I looked at the document. His hands were shaking slightly. Caleb was an executive at Rourke Logistics, but everyone in high society knew he was merely a empty suit living off his mother’s allowance.
"And if I don't sign it?" I asked quietly, keeping my eyes downward.
"Then you prove you were never really one of us," Diane interjected, walking into the room without knocking. She adjusted her pearls with an icy smirk. "We gave you a title, Clara. You were a nobody with a dying father when Caleb brought you home. Don't forget where the power lies in this house."
"My father is gone, Diane," I said softly, touching the locket around my neck. "But he taught me math. And math doesn't lie."
Diane laughed, a sharp, dismissive sound. "Math doesn't buy lawyers, dear. Our legal team has retained every top firm in the state."
What she didn't realize was that my father's trusted estate attorney, Marcus Sterling, had already received the automated alert seventy-two hours ago. Marcus wasn't a local lawyer who could be bought over golf at the country club; he was a former federal prosecutor specializing in corporate embezzlement.
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That afternoon, while Caleb was at the office and Diane was at her charity luncheon, my phone buzzed with a private encrypted message from Marcus.
The flag has cleared, Clara. The Treasury Department has frozen the Rourke main holding account pending cross-border review. The trap is sprung.
