The following morning, Victoria personally flagged the missing funds to the internal auditing committee, ensuring that the alert reached Marcus’s desk right as he landed in New York from his Chicago business trip.
She had built the perfect trap. Marcus, volatile and fiercely protective of the family legacy, would fly into a rage and confront their father. Charles, frail and confused, would break under the pressure. The board would convene on Friday, view the transfer logs, observe Charles’s mental collapse, and hand Victoria the chairmanship.
Except she hadn't noticed the black dome camera sitting atop the grandfather clock.
Act III: The Unraveling
Chapter 5: The Playback
The silence in the grand marble hall was so heavy that the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock sounded like sledgehammers striking wood.
Charles pulled a dark smartphone from his inner jacket pocket. His fingers, no longer shaking, tapped the glass screen three times. He selected the security application and hit the playback button, switching the device to speakerphone.
A sharp, clear audio stream echoed off the marble walls:
“Is he sleeping?” Sophia’s recorded voice asked through the phone’s speaker.
“Yes,” Victoria’s recorded voice replied on the audio, crisp and devoid of any hesitation. “The sedative worked. Hand me his laptop.”
“Victoria... what if Marcus asks for a forensic IT audit on the IP address?”