Chapter 3 - THE SIGNATURE OF DOOM8
The stillness in the study was suffocating. The scent of rain, old paper, and Tabitha’s heavy luxury perfume clashed in the closed space.
"Calvin, think for one second!" Tabitha hissed, grabbing his forearm so hard her nails dug into the dark fabric of his jacket. "We walk away right now, we review the wording with our attorneys at Sterling & Cross, and we come back tomorrow!"
"If you walk out of this room without signing," Penelope said with ice cold professionalism, "the codicil explicitly states that the offer expires at precisely twelve noon today. It is currently eleven-forty-eight AM."
"This is coercion!" Tabitha shouted, standing up so violently her heavy wooden chair scraped loudly against the oak floorboards. "This is an illegal setup! You tricked him, Paige! You and this washed-up lawyer!"
"Sit down, Tabitha," I said quietly. My voice was calm, a stark contrast to her rising panic. "Nobody is forcing Calvin to do anything. He wanted the company. He claimed he earned it. My father left it to him—on the simple condition that he swears he was honest while working for him."
I looked directly into Calvin's eyes. I saw the desperate conflict raging inside his mind. He was a man driven by appearances. The thought of walking out of this room empty-handed, of letting the elite circles of the city know he had been stripped of his title and kicked out of the Vance family without a cent, was a fate worse than death to him.
"Calvin..." Tabitha whispered, her voice faltering into a desperate edge. "Don't do it."
"I have to, Tabitha!" Calvin snapped, flinching away from her grip. His face was flushed red, wet with perspiration. "If I don't sign, Paige gets everything! Everything we worked for for the past two years goes up in smoke! Do you want us to be left with nothing?!"
"You don't know what they have!" Tabitha hissed through her teeth, her voice dropping so low I almost couldn't hear it. "You don't know what Everett found out!"
"Everett was dying!" Calvin yelled back, losing his composure completely. "He was on morphine! He didn't know anything!"
Calvin picked up the golden Parker pen. His hand was shaking violently. He flipped to the final page of the declaration.
"Calvin, no!" Tabitha reached for the pen, but Calvin pushed her hand away.
"I built this company!" Calvin roared, his voice cracking with ego and fear. "I deserve this!"
He brought the pen down onto the paper. He dragged his name across the line in a messy, jagged signature. Calvin J. Miller.
The sound of the nib scratching against the thick paper was the sweetest music I had ever heard.
The moment the last line was drawn, Penelope reached across the table and pulled the signed document smoothly toward her side. She produced an official notary stamp from her briefcase, pressed it down with a heavy, sharp thud, and signed her own name beneath his.
"The signature is witnessed and officially notarized," Penelope declared. "The transfer of assets is now executed."
Tabitha collapsed back into her chair, her face devoid of all color. She looked as though she had just watched a execution.
"Now," Calvin panted, wiping his forehead with a silk handkerchief, his eyes wide and vacant. "It's done. The fifty-one percent is mine. The estate is ours. You can take your little gardening tools and get off my property, Paige."
I didn't move. I slowly reached into my leather handbag and took out the small black USB drive that my father had left in his desk drawer. I placed it gently on the center of the table, right beside Calvin’s trembling hands.
"What is that?" Calvin asked, his voice suddenly small.
"That," Penelope answered, "is the evidentiary exhibit attached to Codicil Seven."
Penelope leaned forward, her eyes locked onto Calvin like a predator observing its prey. "Mr. Miller, when you signed that declaration, you swore under penalty of grand perjury that you had never diverted company funds or conspired with external entities to defraud Vance Enterprises. By signing that document, you officially entered a legally binding statement into a court-monitored estate record."
Calvin’s breath hitched. "What are you talking about?"
"On that flash drive," I said, stepping closer to the table, "are five years of forensic audit reports from Vance Enterprises. They detail twenty-two separate offshore shell accounts established under your name and Tabitha’s maiden name. They trace four point two million dollars stolen directly from my father’s development funds."
Calvin froze. The blood drained completely from his face, leaving him a ghastly gray.
"That's not all," I continued, my voice steady and cold. "There are high-definition video recordings of Tabitha bribing my father’s hospice nurse to gain access to his private legal files. And there are recorded telephone calls between you and a legal consultant discussing how to fake my father's signature on a fraudulent property deed."
Tabitha jumped up, her eyes wide with frantic rage. "That's illegal! You taped us! That's wiretapping! It’s inadmissible!"
"In a civil court, perhaps," Penelope countered smoothly, pulling her phone from her pocket and tapping the screen twice. "However, when a fraud involves grand larceny, corporate embezzlement, and elder abuse, state federal prosecutors view things quite differently. And because you signed that false integrity document five minutes ago, Calvin, you have just committed felony perjury in the presence of an officer of the court."
The front doors of the mansion echoed with a loud, thunderous knock.
The sound reverberated through the grand hallway, sharp and heavy. Calvin jumped violently in his chair. Tabitha spun around, her mouth open in absolute shock.
"Who is that?" Calvin gasped, his voice pitch-high with panic.
"That," Kyle said, finally stepping away from the fireplace with a cold, distant look in his eyes, "would be the Detective Miller from the Financial Crimes Unit, along with agents from the Internal Revenue Service."
Calvin stared at Kyle, utterly stunned. "Kyle... what did you do? You were with us! You took the money! You signed the agreement with Tabitha!"
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Kyle reached into his jacket, pulled out an envelope containing a single cashier's check, and tossed it onto the table in front of Tabitha.
"I took your money so I could hand it straight over to the district attorney as evidence of an attempted bribe," Kyle said softly. "You thought you were buying my loyalty, Tabitha. But you forgot one thing. Everett Vance was my father. And nobody destroys my family."
