Chapter 5 - The War Room
The media fallout was biblical.
For three days, I didn't leave my father’s house. News helicopters circled our neighborhood, but we had the blinds drawn. The internet had exploded. Chloe had uploaded the video of me walking down the aisle in the ruined dress, and it had gone viral in minutes. #TheRuinedBride was trending worldwide.
I sat at our dining room table, surrounded by federal agents and piles of legal boxes.
Special Agent Harris, a no-nonsense woman who had coordinated the raid, slid a cup of coffee toward me. "You built a better case in five months than we did in two years, Elena. But Victoria is fighting back. She's hired the best defense team in the country, and she's trying to pin the entire operation on Julian."
I scoffed. "She would throw her own son to the wolves to save her country club membership."
"Exactly," Harris said. "But Julian is claiming you were the mastermind. He's saying the offshore accounts are in your name."
"They are," I admitted, pulling a folder from my leather bag. "Because Victoria forged my signature on them while I was wedding dress shopping. But I have the security footage from her home office proving she signed them, not me. I installed a nanny cam in a potted plant two months ago."
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Agent Harris stared at me, a slow, impressed smile spreading across her face. "You really didn't leave them a single way out, did you?"
"When you strike a king," I replied, "you don't leave him breathing."
