Chapter 5 - The Web of Collusion
Julian slid down against the doorframe until he was sitting on the damp floorboards, clutching his head in his hands. The reality of what had just transpired hit him like a freight train. In less than an hour, his pristine public image, his lucrative partnership, and his manufactured moral superiority had been ground into dust.
“Harper, please,” Julian croaked, looking up at me from the floor. His bravado was entirely gone. “Don’t do this to me. Think of our decade together. We can fix this. We can go to therapy. I’ll fire Mia right now—she meant nothing to me! She was just a distraction!”
From inside the bathroom, a loud crash echoed as Mia knocked over a tray of expensive toiletries. She emerged from behind the glass door, wrapped in her towel, her eyes blazing through smeared eyeliner.
“A distraction?” Mia screamed at Julian, completely abandoning her timid maid persona. “You told me you loved me! You told me that as soon as you transferred the trust fund assets to your mother’s LLC, you were going to kick Harper out of this house and move me in! You promised me a condo downtown!”
Beatrice gasped loudly, slapping her hands over her ears. “Silence! Both of you, shut your mouths!”
“No, Beatrice, let her speak,” I said smoothly, pulling out a voice recorder from my purse and holding it up. “Please, Mia, tell everyone more about this downtown condo. Was it purchased with the construction budget Julian siphoned from the hospital expansion project?”
Julian lunged forward from the floor, trying to grab the recorder, but Arthur—his own father—stepped in front of him, planting a firm shoe on Julian’s chest and pushing him back down.
“Stay down, Julian,” Arthur said, his voice laced with profound disgust. “You have embarrassed this name enough for one lifetime.”
“Dad, you don’t understand! Mom told me to do it!” Julian yelled, pointing a trembling, wet finger directly at Beatrice. “Mom said Harper was too controlling! Mom said the Caldwells deserved to control the firm, not Harper’s family! She introduced me to Mia! She hired her!”
The bedroom went dead silent. Even the sound of the rain starting to tap against the skylight seemed to pause.
I turned slowly to face Beatrice.
The immaculate matriarch, who had spent ten years criticizing my cooking, my wardrobe, my inability to conceive a child on her timeline, and my family’s old-money traditions, looked like a trapped animal. Her hands trembled violently as she clutched her pearl necklace.
“Beatrice,” I said softly, the betrayal cutting deeper than Julian’s shallow lust ever could. “You hand-picked Mia?”
“She... she was a distant relative of my cousin’s family,” Beatrice stammered, backing away toward the hallway. “She needed work! Julian was unhappy, Harper! You were always so cold, so distant, always burying yourself in your charity boards and your family’s foundation! A man has needs! I wanted him to have someone who adored him, someone pliable, someone who knew her place!”
“Someone pliable who wouldn't notice when you used her social security number to open a fake shell corporation to divert my inheritance,” I corrected, pulling a thick stack of printed bank statements out of my bedside drawer and throwing them at Beatrice’s feet.
The papers fluttered through the air, scattering across the carpet like white leaves.
“Did you really think I wouldn't notice two million dollars moving through a company named 'MC Holdings'?” I asked. “Mia Campbell Holdings. You used a twenty-year-old girl as a financial mule, Beatrice. And you signed every single authorization with your own notary stamp.”
Arthur dropped to his knees, picking up several sheets of paper. As he read the numbers and the forged signatures, tears of humiliation welled in his aged eyes. He looked up at his wife of forty years with utter contempt. “Beatrice... you committed felony wire fraud in our family’s name?”
May you like
“I did it for us!” Beatrice wailed, her aristocratic composure completely shattering into shrill hysteria. “Harper’s father looked down on us for decades! He treated you like a second-rate clerk, Arthur! We deserved that wealth! We built Julian into what he is!”
“You built him into a coward and a criminal,” I said. “And tonight, the foundation collapses.”
