Chapter 8 - The Ultimatum
For twenty minutes, Valerie paced the vault like a caged animal. She threatened to sue me. She threatened to have me committed. She threatened violence.
I just watched her, letting the silence drain her energy. Arthur was right. Let them test the handle. Let them exhaust themselves.
Finally, she slumped against the wall, sliding down to the floor, her designer coat collecting dust.
"What do you want?" she asked, her voice raspy.
"At 8:00 AM on Monday," I said, checking my wristwatch, "an automated email is scheduled to send from a secure server. It contains the contents of Thorne’s flash drive. It will go to the FBI field office in Miami, the IRS criminal investigation division, and the Nevada state prosecutor."
Valerie closed her eyes. A tear cut through her immaculate makeup.
"However," I continued, "I can cancel that email. Under two conditions."
She looked up, a glimmer of desperate hope in her eyes. "Name them."
"First," I said, "Vance Holdings will transfer exactly one point two million dollars—the sale price of my Victorian home—into a trust account I have established in David's name."
"That's extortion," she whispered.
"That's restitution," David corrected coldly.
"And the second condition?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"You will sign the divorce papers David is going to have drafted on Monday," I said. "You will leave this marriage with what you brought into it. Nothing more. You will not touch his pension, his savings, or this family's assets. If you try to fight him in court, the email sends."
May you like
Valerie looked at David, pleading. "Davey, please. I did it for us. I did it so we could be wealthy, so we wouldn't have to struggle."
"We weren't struggling, Val," David said, his voice breaking, but his posture resolute. "You were just greedy."
