Chapter 35 - Chloe's Transmission
The screen mounted on the wall of the conference room buzzed with an incoming high-priority satellite connection.
"It's routing through a private IP in Palm Beach," Frank said, stepping over to the terminal. "Vance's personal residence. Let it through."
The high-definition monitor flickered to life. Sitting at an expansive, gold-trimmed desk in front of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Atlantic ocean was Arthur Vance. He looked pristine, his silver hair immaculately styled, his bespoke three-piece suit without a wrinkle. But beside him sat Chloe.
She looked entirely different from the smug, condescending girl who had handed me an eviction checklist on my kitchen counter. Her designer makeup was smudged, her blonde hair was pulled back into a frantic ponytail, and her fingers were tearing at a diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist. Behind them, two private security guards in dark suits stood with their hands folded at their waists.
"Evie," Arthur Vance spoke, his voice smooth as melted butter over broken glass. "You always were remarkably stubborn. I had hoped Frank's dramatic little rescue on the lake would end more neatly, but I suppose an old dog never forgets how to run."
"Arthur," I said calmly, looking directly into the camera lens. "You look tired. Has your liquidity dried up yet?"
Vance’s left eyelid gave an imperceptible twitch. "A temporary administrative hiccup in Bern. Nothing my lobbyists in Washington can't untangle by noon. But you seem to have forgotten what is actually at stake here."
He turned slightly and snapped his fingers. Chloe lurched forward toward the microphone, her face pale, her voice shrill and borderline hysterical.
"David! David, are you there?!" she screamed into the screen, her eyes darting frantically toward Arthur Vance before locking onto the lens. "David, you tell your mother to release the injunction right now! Do you have any idea what you've done?! The bank froze my accounts! My cards were declined at the clinic! They're putting a lien on my mother's condo! Arthur says if the Swiss trust doesn't clear by three o'clock, he's turning over my signed affidavits to the federal grand jury!"
David slowly stood up from his chair. He walked over to the camera, standing beside me. His face was cold, stripped of every ounce of the desperate infatuation that had once made him Chloe's doormat.
"Hello, Chloe," David said quietly.
"David! Honey, please!" Chloe sobbed, tears cutting lines through her foundation. "I did this for us! For our family! Arthur promised us fifty million! We were going to have a private estate in Boca! We were going to give Leo the life we never had! Your mother was hoarding everything! She was going to make us beg for diaper money while she sat on an empire!"
"My mother bought the roof over your head," David said, his voice flat, completely devoid of mercy. "She cooked your meals when you claimed morning sickness kept you in bed all day. She paid off your student loans so you could start fresh. And you sold our son to the man who tried to murder my father."
"David, he's going to ruin me!" Chloe shrieked, slamming her palms on the desk. "He has the notes on my parents' house! He has the contracts I signed! If you don't release the Swiss accounts, I'm going to prison!"
"Then you should have thought about the prison uniforms before you measured the curtains in my mother's living room," David said.
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"David, wait—"
"Goodbye, Chloe." David reached forward and cut the audio feed with his own hand.
