Chapter 8 - The Scent of Fraud
The interrogation room at the county precinct was cold, sterile, and smelled of industrial floor stripper.
Ethan sat at the stainless-steel table, his hands cuffed to an iron ring anchored to the floor. His designer suit was wrinkled, his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like a man who had spent the last six hours staring into an abyss of his own making.
The door opened. I walked in, carrying a plain cardboard folder, accompanied by Detective Reynolds, the lead investigator on the fraud task force.
Ethan jerked his head up. When he saw me, a pathetic, desperate spark of hope ignited in his eyes.
"Rebecca!" he gasped, leaning forward as far as the chain would allow. "Thank God! Tell them! Tell them this is a domestic dispute! Tell Reynolds this was all a misunderstanding about family finances!"
I sat across from him. I didn't speak. I simply opened the folder and laid three photographs on the table.
The first was the photograph of Lily’s bruised arm, captured under the harsh clinic lights.
The second was the birth certificate of Oliver Vance.
The third was the wire-transfer manifest from Oakmont Trust to the Cayman Islands account.
Ethan stared at the photos. The hope in his eyes withered, dying like an unwatered plant under a desert sun.
"You knew," he whispered, his voice cracking.
"I know everything, Ethan," I said. "I know about Julianna Mercer. I know about the eight-hundred-thousand-dollar judgment in California. I know about your uncle Harold fabricating commercial guarantees. And I know you used my dead husband’s money to keep yourself out of prison."
Ethan buried his face in his cuffed hands, his shoulders shaking. "Rebecca, please... you don't understand the pressure Mom put on me. She said if I went to jail, the family name would be ruined. She said Julianna was extorting us—"
"Julianna was collecting child support for your biological child," I cut him off, my voice merciless. "The child you hid from me. The child you abandoned while letting your mother treat Lily like dirt on her shoe."
"I loved Lily!" Ethan cried, looking up, snot and tears running down his face. "I swear to God, Rebecca, I loved her! I was trying to protect everyone!"
"You stood there with a glass of wine while your mother shoved her onto the floor."
"I froze!" he screamed, his voice bouncing off the concrete walls. "I was terrified Mom would blow the lid off the loans! I was trapped!"
"No, Ethan," I said, leaning forward, looking directly into his hollow, ruined face. "You weren't trapped. You were a coward. You chose to sacrifice a six-year-old girl who called you Daddy so you could keep driving a luxury car and pretending to be a successful architect."
Detective Reynolds stepped forward, tapping the table with a pen. "Ethan Vance, Harold has already agreed to a proffer agreement with the state attorney general. He’s naming you as the principal architect of the digital signature forgery. He claims you brought him the altered documents."
Ethan’s jaw dropped. "What? Harold said that? Harold was the one who suggested it! He told me the compliance audit wasn't until next year! He told me we had eighteen months to flip the Heritage Ridge paper!"
"Then you’d better start talking on the record," Reynolds said coldly, sliding a Miranda waiver toward him. "Because the train is leaving the station, Ethan. And right now, you and your mother are the ones tied to the tracks."
Ethan looked at the pen. He looked at me, his eyes begging for a shred of sympathy, a single spark of the unconditional support I had given him for three years.
He found nothing.
"Sign the waiver, Ethan," I said quietly. "Or spend the next ten years wondering what Lily’s graduation will look like from a federal cell."
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Trembling, his fingers gripping the cheap ballpoint pen as if it were a liferaft, Ethan Vance signed his name.
***
