Chapter 8 - The Lawyer's Desperation
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Before Grant could insert the cassette into a player, the elevator chime echoed through the quiet outer lobby.
It was three-thirty in the morning.
The heavy glass entrance doors clicked open, and hurried, unsteady footsteps approached the office.
Grant stepped in front of Mia instinctively, placing himself between her and the hallway.
The figure that stumbled into Julian’s office was not Julian.
It was Richard Monroe.
Celeste’s father looked twenty years older than he had at the rehearsal dinner five hours earlier.
His gray hair was uncombed, his expensive silk tie hung loose around his unbuttoned collar, and his eyes were red and wild with panic.
“Grant,” Richard wheezed, clutching the doorframe to steady himself.
“I saw the building security alerts.”
“I knew you would come here.”
Grant stood tall behind Julian’s desk, his eyes hard as flint.
“You have five seconds to explain why you’re in my building, Richard, before I have you arrested for criminal trespassing.”
Richard stepped into the room, raising both hands in a desperate gesture of surrender.
“You don't understand, Grant,” Richard begged, his voice shaking.
“Julian contacted me forty minutes ago.”
“He’s liquidating the offshore holding accounts in Grand Cayman right now!”
Grant froze.
“What offshore accounts?”
Richard pulled a crumpled stack of legal documents from his trench coat pocket and threw them onto the desk.
“Julian has been embezzling money from your father’s estate since the day Charles went into the hospital in 2016!”
“He used Rebecca Carter’s non-disclosure agreement as a front!”
“He billed the Holloway family trust fifty thousand dollars a month for ‘confidential settlement maintenance’!”
Mia stared at the papers in horror.
“Fifty thousand dollars a month?” Mia asked, her voice trembling with righteous fury.
“My mother received two thousand five hundred!”
“We lived in a basement apartment with broken radiators while he took forty-seven thousand dollars a month in her name?”
Richard looked at Mia with genuine guilt and shame in his sunken eyes.
“I didn't know the full extent of the theft until two years ago, young lady,” Richard whispered.
“I swear on my daughter’s life, I didn't know.”
“You helped him draft the agreements, Richard!” Grant roared, stepping around the desk until he was inches from the trembling attorney.
“You were my father’s personal counsel for thirty years!”
“You were supposed to protect our family!”
“Julian had documents on me, Grant!” Richard shouted, tears spilling over his wrinkled cheeks.
“Back in 2002, when your father first found out Rebecca was pregnant, Charles was terrified of losing his company.”
“Julian secretly recorded Charles ordering the suppression of the medical records.”
“If that recording had ever gone public, my law firm would have been disbarred and destroyed overnight!”
Richard reached into his coat again, pulling out an encrypted silver flash drive.
“Julian thought he was the only one who kept insurance,” Richard said, his hands shaking as he placed the drive on the desk.
“I recorded our private strategy sessions.”
“I recorded Julian bragging about how he manipulated your father’s dementia in his final months to gain sole power of attorney over the family accounts.”
Grant looked down at the flash drive, then back into the eyes of the man whose daughter he had almost married.
“Why are you giving this to me now, Richard?” Grant asked coldly.
Richard swallowed hard, his voice barely audible.
“Because Celeste is my only child, Grant.”
“Julian called her twenty minutes ago and threatened to destroy her reputation if she didn't help him access the secondary company servers.”
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“He’s insane, Grant.”
“He has nothing left to lose.”
