Chapter 9 - The Empire Started Looking Back
Dr. Bennett did not receive immunity.
Prosecutors made that clear.
He could provide information, and they would evaluate his cooperation later.
His account complicated everything.
Victor Hayes had approached him first.
Victor supplied dental images.
Victor told him the identification was “family-approved.”
Bennett accepted money from Victoria’s family office afterward.
“Did Victoria know the identification was false?” investigators asked.
Bennett said yes.
“Did she order Emily kidnapped?”
Bennett hesitated.
“I never heard her say those words.”
That distinction prevented the easy ending Michael wanted.
Then Bennett described the original plan.
Emily was supposed to disappear for six months.
During that period, Victoria intended to push Michael into signing a marital-estate restructuring and surrendering certain voting rights.
Once completed, Emily would supposedly be released overseas with money and instructed never to return.
“Supposedly?” Allison asked.
Bennett looked down.
“That’s what Victor told me.”
Emily had never agreed to any of it.
Her pregnancy changed the situation.
So did her refusal to reveal the blue ledger’s location.
Six months became a year.
Then two.
Meanwhile, the forensic audit uncovered $41 million in questionable related-party transactions.
Not all were theft.
Enough were suspicious that lenders and auditors expanded their review.
Victor was placed on administrative leave.
His attorney insisted every transaction had been authorized by Victoria as acting head of the family trust.
Victoria’s attorneys responded that Victor had manipulated her signatures.
The alliance was cracking.
Yet Michael still could not understand one thing.
His mother was controlling, ruthless, obsessed with Harrington Properties.
But she had never been careless with money.
Why would she approve tens of millions in questionable transfers to Victor?
Emily supplied the clue.
“At Tahoe, Victor used to threaten her.”
“You saw them together?”
“Twice.”
“What did he say?”
Emily thought carefully.
“Once he told her, ‘If Charles’s original files surface, you go down before I do.’”
Charles.
Michael’s dead father.
May you like
The man whose trust clause had supposedly started everything.
For the first time, Michael wondered whether his father had created that clause because he already knew what Victoria and Victor were doing.
