Chapter 10 - Victor Lane
Victor refused to come upstairs.
He was already in the building lobby.
Martin and I went down with security. I left Ryan and his family upstairs under the watch of two officers while building management reviewed access logs.
Victor Lane was fifty, maybe fifty-five, with a healing cut near his hairline and the exhausted face of a man who had not slept well in weeks.
He looked at my stomach first.
“I’m sorry to involve you.”
“You’re already involved.”
He nodded.
We sat in a private conference room.
Victor placed a flash drive on the table.
“I was Grant’s outside accountant.”
Martin leaned forward. “For Hart Development?”
“Yes.”
Victor looked at me. “The company is insolvent. Worse than insolvent. Grant borrowed against projects that were already pledged elsewhere.”
“Double collateral?” Martin asked.
“Sometimes triple.”
I closed my eyes for one second.
“How does Ryan fit into this?”
Victor’s mouth tightened. “Your husband helped create shell companies.”
The words hurt more than I expected.
Not because they surprised me.
Because part of me still wanted one thing to be untrue.
Victor continued. “They planned to use your penthouse and your company shares as clean collateral. Your assets would make the package look legitimate long enough to refinance Grant’s debt.”
“And then?”
“Then you would carry the risk.”
Martin asked, “Why did Grant attack you?”
“I told him I was going to the authorities.”
Victor touched the cut on his head. “He shoved me in the garage. I don’t know if he meant to kill me. But after I hit the barrier, Ryan deleted the footage.”
I stared at the flash drive.
“What’s on that?”
“Backups.”
“Of what?”
“Emails. Wire instructions. Draft affidavits.”
He paused.
“And a voice memo.”
Martin inserted the drive into an offline laptop.
The first audio file was forty-three seconds.
Grant’s voice came through.
“When Claire has the baby, Ryan files. We claim instability, freeze her voting rights, and move the assets before she knows what happened.”
Then Ryan answered.
“What if she fights?”
Grant laughed.
“She’ll be home with a newborn. How hard can she fight?”
My baby kicked beneath my palm.
I looked at Martin.
“Hard,” I said.
Then Victor opened one last folder.
Its name was simple.
May you like
LIFE INSURANCE.
The House He Thought Was His
