Chapter 5 - The Moretti Daughter
Serena turned.
Nobody was there.
Only the open cabinet.
Adrian moved first.
“Nathan?”
The missing attorney raised both hands.
“Don’t.”
Security rushed into the library.
Dominic appeared behind them.
For the first time Serena had ever seen, her father looked genuinely stunned.
“Nathan.”
Nathan stared at Dominic.
“Hello, old friend.”
Dominic dismissed security with one gesture.
“You disappeared.”
“I survived.”
Serena stepped between them.
“Who betrayed me?”
Nathan looked at Adrian.
“Ask him what’s missing from that drive.”
Adrian’s face tightened.
“I never opened it.”
“That’s a lie.”
Serena turned.
“Adrian?”
Nathan reached inside his coat.
Security tensed.
He slowly produced a second flash drive.
“I made two.”
Dominic asked, “Why?”
“Because someone inside your family was feeding Serena’s research to Holloway Financial before Grant began taking it himself.”
Grant heard those words through Serena’s still-connected phone.
He sat alone in his penthouse.
Camille had left.
He activated speakerphone.
Nathan continued.
“Grant was careless. Arrogant. He took ideas from his wife and convinced himself they became his because he understood how to sell them.”
Grant shut his eyes.
“But he wasn’t the beginning.”
Serena asked, “Who was?”
Nathan looked toward Adrian.
Adrian lunged.
Security caught him before he reached Nathan.
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“Adrian.”
“I was protecting this family!”
“From my daughter?”
“From you!”
Silence.
Adrian struggled against the guards.
“You were going to give her everything!”
“She never asked for it.”
“That made it worse!”
Nathan handed Serena the second drive.
“Your early models had one flaw.”
“What?”
“They could be reversed.”
Serena understood.
Her predictive systems identified unusual market movements.
Reversed, they could also disguise them.
Someone could structure transactions specifically to avoid patterns the model identified as suspicious.
Money laundering.
Market manipulation.
Insider trading.
Anything hidden inside normal activity.
Grant stood from his chair.
“Serena.”
Everyone in the library heard him through the phone.
She stared at the device.
Grant said, “Did Holloway process those transactions?”
Nathan answered.
“Yes.”
Grant went white.
“How much?”
“Over six years? Almost nine hundred million dollars.”
Grant gripped the counter.
“I didn’t know.”
Nathan’s voice remained flat.
“I believe you.”
Grant had expected accusation.
The belief frightened him more.
“Why?”
“Because the person doing it needed you exactly as you were.”
“What does that mean?”
“Proud. Distracted. Certain you were the smartest person in every room.”
Grant had no defense.
Nathan continued.
“Your ego was the security system.”
Serena looked down.
For years she had thought Grant’s worst quality had destroyed their marriage.
Now she learned someone had weaponized it.
Dominic approached Adrian.
“Who?”
Adrian laughed bitterly.
“You still don’t understand.”
“Tell me.”
“I didn’t create the laundering network.”
“Who did?”
Adrian looked at Serena.
“I found it.”
“And?”
“I used Camille to trace it.”
Serena frowned.
“You said you hired her.”
“I did. But not to destroy your marriage.”
“You paid a woman to spy on my husband.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“She stopped reporting to me.”
“When?”
“Eighteen months ago.”
Around the time Camille’s affair with Grant began.
Serena felt an unexpected ache.
Not jealousy.
Something sadder.
Grant had not simply betrayed her.
He had been manipulated by someone who had entered their lives years earlier.
But manipulation did not erase choice.
Camille had opened the door.
Grant had walked through it.
Nathan inserted his drive into a secure laptop.
Files appeared.
Accounts.
Transactions.
Shell companies.
One name repeated.
CFS Strategic Communications.
Camille Foster Strategies.
Grant saw it through the video connection.
“No.”
Nathan opened another file.
Payments from Holloway Financial subsidiaries had flowed to Camille’s company.
Then overseas.
Then back through entities tied to ports controlled by Moretti competitors.
Dominic stared.
“This could destroy both companies.”
“That was the intention,” Nathan said.
“Whose?”
Nathan opened a final directory.
Password protected.
“I don’t know.”
Serena moved beside him.
“Can you open it?”
“I need the encryption key.”
“Where is it?”
Nathan looked at Grant through the phone.
“Inside Holloway Financial.”
Grant straightened.
“Where?”
“Your original office.”
“That building was renovated.”
“The safe?”
“I never had a safe.”
Nathan shook his head.
“Serena did.”
Grant remembered.
Behind the bookshelf.
A small wall safe Serena used before he converted her office.
He had never asked what was inside.
Again.
Never asked.
Grant grabbed his coat.
“I’m going.”
Serena said, “Wait.”
He stopped.
For the first time since the courthouse, her voice contained concern.
“Camille knows about it.”
“How?”
“She knows everything else.”
Grant looked toward the dark hallway of his penthouse.
A faint sound came from downstairs.
The elevator.
He lived in a secured private-floor residence.
Nobody should have been able to access it.
“Grant?” Serena said.
The elevator chimed.
Its doors began opening.
Grant backed away.
A woman’s silhouette appeared.
He expected Camille.
It wasn’t.
The woman stepped into the light carrying Serena’s missing white wedding-day folder.
Grant recognized her immediately.
She was the court clerk who had stood beside Judge Price during the divorce.
She looked at Grant and quietly said:
May you like
“Mr. Holloway, your divorce was never supposed to become final.”
Then she opened the folder...
