Chapter 4 - The Projection Screen Goes Live
"You think you've won, don't you?" Eric’s voice rose, cracking through the room as he finally found his nerve. He stepped away from the catering cart, his chest heaving under his custom-tailored shirt. "You think you're so smart, Maya! You treat everyone around you like soldiers in a platoon! You schedule our dates, you manage our investments, you run this house like a supply depot! You never made me feel like a man!"
"A man?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "Is that what you call a person who spends forty thousand dollars of his wife's logistics company revenue on designer handbags and private suites while hiding behind his wife's business credit?"
"That's company expense!" Eric yelled, his face turning an ugly shade of plum. "I had full signing authority!"
"You had signing authority," I agreed, pointing up toward the ceiling. "Until eight o'clock tonight."
I looked at the DJ booth at the far end of the ballroom. The young technician behind the mixer was staring wide-eyed, completely petrified. Beside him stood Grant’s junior partner, an IT specialist named Tyler. Tyler gave me a sharp nod from behind the mixing board.
With a soft electronic hum, the two massive motorized projector screens that flanked the stage began to descend. They had been set up ostensibly to display a nostalgic slideshow of our ten years together—photos of our wedding in Savannah, vacations in Cabo, our first home renovation in Decatur.
Instead, the projectors flashed to life, casting high-resolution scans of legal documents across thirty feet of white canvas.
The entire room craned their necks.
"On the left screen," I announced over the microphone, "you will see the forensic accounting summary completed by the state revenue board yesterday afternoon. It details seventy-two unauthorized wire transfers from the Hart Logistics operational account into an offshore holding company registered under the name 'N. Thorne Enterprises'—Natalie's middle name and preferred pseudonym."
Natalie gasped, clutching her throat. "That was private! Those were business investments!"
"On the right screen," I continued without missing a beat, "you will see the criminal complaint filed this morning with the county district attorney's financial crimes division for grand larceny and wire fraud. The total sum embezzled over the last fourteen months is four hundred and twelve thousand dollars."
The murmurs in the room exploded into an uproar. Guests were pulling out their smartphones, snapping pictures of the projected financial ledgers and bank transaction records before the venue staff could figure out how to pull the master power switches.
"Eric," I said, looking him dead in the eye, "did you think I wouldn't notice half a million dollars vanishing from my corporate reserves? Did you think that because I love this family, I am blind?"
"Maya, please," Eric begged, suddenly dropping his aggressive posture and taking a stumbling step toward me with his hands outstretched. "We can fix this. It was Natalie's idea! She pressured me! She told me you were planning to cut me out of the company anyway! She said we had to protect ourselves!"
"You coward!" Natalie shrieked, lunging at Eric this time. Her manicured nails caught him across the cheek, leaving three bright red scratch marks that welled with crimson beads. "You promised me we were going to Costa Rica! You swore you had the passports ready!"
Eric shoved her back violently. "Get away from me, you crazy parasite! You lied to me about the baby! You let me think I was going to be a father while you were sleeping with Julian Vance behind my back!"
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The two of them grappled against the tiered table, their frantic movements finally sending the massive three-tier cake crashing to the parquet floor in an avalanche of white buttercream, crushed sugar flowers, and shattered crystal.
The guests stood up in unison, backing away from the spectacle as if witnessing a chemical spill.
