Chapter 6 - The Subpoena
The heavy mahogany doors of the Thorne & Vance Holdings lobby swung open, letting in the biting November wind. Two federal agents in crisp windbreakers stepped through, their badges gleaming under the recessed lighting. They didn't stop at the reception desk; they had a direct escort to the 40th floor.
Julian watched from his glass-walled office as the agents walked out of the elevator. They weren't there for him. They were there for the remaining physical servers tied to Arthur Vance’s old executive suite.
"They're thorough, I'll give them that," Evelyn said, not looking up from her tablet as she sat on the leather sofa in Julian's office. "The SEC doesn't just want the digital logs I provided. They want the hard drives to ensure Arthur didn't have offline backups of the Delaware shell company's ledgers."
"Do you think he did?" Julian asked, sipping a black espresso.
"Arthur is old school. He doesn't trust the cloud," Evelyn smirked, finally looking up. "Which means he almost certainly kept physical ledgers of his daughter's embezzlement, likely locked in his private safe. He thought it was leverage. Instead, it’s a smoking gun."
Across town, Sarah was experiencing a very different kind of morning. She was sitting in the sterile, fluorescent-lit office of a public defender. Her $1,000-an-hour shark had abandoned her, and the frozen assets meant she couldn't even afford a paralegal, let alone a defense team.
"Ms. Vance," the overworked public defender, a young man named Harris, sighed, rubbing his temples. "The prosecution is offering a plea deal. If you allocute—meaning you admit to the wire fraud, the corporate espionage, and the embezzlement—they will recommend a reduced sentence of forty-eight months in a minimum-security facility."
Sarah stared at him, her eyes bloodshot, her designer clothes looking crumpled and unwashed. "Forty-eight months? Four years? I am not going to prison! My father is Arthur Vance!"
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"Your father," Harris said, sliding a manila folder across the desk, "was just indicted this morning as a co-conspirator. It seems they found a hard drive in his office safe that contained direct email correspondence between you and him, discussing the shadow accounts. He knew, Ms. Vance. And now, the feds know he knew."
Sarah felt the room spin. The last pillar of her invincible world had just crumbled to dust.
