Chapter 4 - The Other Woman in Room 412
Her words hit Daniel like a physical blow. He stood in the quiet kitchen, the truth stripping away the toxic layers of jealousy and paranoia that had poisoned his mind for three unbearable days. He remembered the cold satisfaction he had felt earlier when she flinched, the ugly impulse to punish her before hearing the truth.
He walked around the island and knelt beside her stool. He reached out cautiously and placed his hand over her trembling fingers. She flinched slightly, then leaned into his warmth, her tears soaking through the sleeve of his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, the words heavy and real. “I’m sorry I asked you that question. I let an anonymous phone call make me forget who you are.”
Elise shook her head against his shoulder. “You had every right to be suspicious. The video looked horrific. If I saw you in an elevator with four women laughing like that, I would have lost my mind.”
Daniel took a deep breath, his analytical accountant brain kicking into overdrive. For ten years, he had made a living hunting discrepancies, tracing hidden money, and uncovering corporate fraud. These men were powerful, arrogant, and ruthless, but they had made one fatal mistake: they had underestimated how far a husband would go to protect his family once the truth was out in the open.
“You mentioned another woman earlier,” Daniel said, pulling back slightly to look into her eyes. “When you listed who was upstairs. You said a woman came up to Suite 412 for ten minutes and then left. Who was she?”
Elise wiped her face with the sleeve of her cardigan. “Tanya Vance. She’s the senior event coordinator for the conference venue. She came up with the extra room keys and the hotel’s inventory sheet for the premium mini-bar restock. She saw the atmosphere in the room before things got aggressive. When she walked out, Chris Hall made a disgusting comment about her behind her back.”
“Did she hear it?”
“She must have. She looked disgusted. She handed Mark the clipboard, took the receipt, and left without saying another word.”
Daniel stood up, his jaw set in a hard line. “If Tanya Vance was in that room, she’s an independent third-party witness. She isn't an employee of your firm. She has no loyalty to Owen Chase or Mark Delaney. And more importantly, she knows the exact timestamp when she entered and exited Suite 412.”
Elise’s eyes widened slightly with a glimmer of hope. “The hotel would have keycard logs for the master service keys. And the hallway security cameras! Daniel, the hallway cameras would show me running out of that room in tears. Owen told me he had security in his pocket, but a downtown Hyatt Regency isn’t going to destroy internal server backups for a regional marketing executive.”
“Owen was bluffing to keep you terrified,” Daniel said coldly. “Predators always act larger than life when they think their prey has no backup. But they didn’t count on me. And they definitely didn’t count on what I’m about to do to Meridian Logistics.”
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“Daniel, no,” Elise said, grabbing his forearm with genuine panic. “If Richard Chase finds out you’re digging into the offshore accounts, they’ll use their legal team to crush you. They have twenty-million-dollar retainers with corporate defense firms. You’re a senior auditor at a mid-tier firm.”
“They have money,” Daniel said, a grim, dangerous smile touching his lips for the first time in weeks. “But I have the ledger. And when corporate executives get sloppy with their personal vices, they always leave a digital trail in their financial books. Let’s see how bold Owen Chase feels when his corporate expense accounts meet the Internal Revenue Service.”
