Chapter 8 - THE DESPERATE OFFER8
Twenty-four hours later, the storm had completely cleared, leaving behind a sky of brilliant, icy blue.
Ethan Montgomery sat in a cramped, windowless consultation room inside the Mecklenburg County Detention Center. He was no longer wearing his three-piece Armani suit. Instead, he wore a dark orange inmate jumpsuit, his hair unwashed, his face covered in a rough, uneven stubble.
Sitting across from him was Marcus Vance, looking exhausted and visibly uncomfortable in the sterile, fluorescent-lit room.
“The federal prosecutor filed formal charges two hours ago, Ethan,” Marcus said, pushing a thirty-page indictment across the metal table. “Bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and illegal equity extraction totaling 2.4 million dollars.”
Ethan stared at the papers, his fingers shaking so violently he could barely turn the pages. “My mother… where is my mother?”
“Patricia is being held in the female processing wing on a fifty-thousand-dollar bond,” Marcus replied flatly. “She’s facing state felony charges for fraud, falsification of financial documents, and evidence tampering.”
“Bail her out!” Ethan yelled, slamming his hand on the metal table. “Use the offshore account! Use the cold storage wallets!”
Marcus looked at Ethan with deep, professional pity.
“The FBI executed a seizure warrant on all linked digital wallets forty-five minutes ago, Ethan. Claire provided them with the master decryption keys she extracted from your mother’s historical trust records. You don’t have an offshore account anymore. You don’t have a single dollar.”
Ethan dropped his head into his hands, letting out a choked, desperate sound that was half-sob, half-groan. Everything had dissolved in less than five days. His executive title, his multi-million-dollar house, his luxury cars, his social standing, and now his freedom—all gone.
“There’s only one option left, Ethan,” Marcus said quietly, leaning across the table. “Claire’s legal team offered a plea bargain framework before the federal indictment was officially unsealed by the judge.”
Ethan snapped his head up, a glimmer of desperate hope flashing in his bloodshot eyes. “What? What does she want?”
Marcus pulled a final, thin document from his leather briefcase.
“She wants a total, absolute surrender,” Marcus said. “You sign an immediate, non-contested divorce agreement. You relinquish every claim to all marital property, all corporate equity, and all trust assets. You sign a full, sworn affidavit admitting to the physical assault and the corporate fraud, which will be submitted to the state prosecutor in exchange for dropping the domestic violence felony down to a misdemeanor.”
“And what about the federal charges?” Ethan gasped.
“If you sign,” Marcus explained, “Claire’s trust will agree not to seek punitive financial damages in civil court, which means the federal prosecutor will likely cap your sentence at five to seven years in a minimum-security facility rather than twenty years in a maximum-security prison.”
Ethan stared at the document. It was a complete, absolute admission of defeat. Signing it meant accepting that he was a convicted felon, a disgraced executive, and a penniless outcast.
“She planned this…” Ethan whispered, tears finally spilling over his eyelashes, running down his stubbled cheeks. “She knew every step I was going to take… she sat in that kitchen four nights ago and watched me fall into her trap…”
“She didn't plan your choices, Ethan,” Marcus said coolly, clicking his pen and placing it on top of the document. “You chose to cheat on her. You chose to steal from your company. You chose to grab her wrist while she had a fever. She just made sure that when you fell, you hit concrete.”
Ethan held the pen with a trembling hand. The silence in the interrogation room was suffocating, broken only by the hum of the air vent above.
May you like
He thought of the way he had knocked her thermometer onto the floor. He thought of how he had laughed when she said she owned the house. He thought of Patricia tapping her fingernail against the empty plate, calling Claire useless.
With a broken, trembling stroke, Ethan signed his name at the bottom of the page.
