Chapter 8 - Daniel Returns With the Missing Drive
Daniel contacted Claire directly.
He asked to meet in Rebecca’s office.
Claire agreed.
When he entered, she barely recognized him.
Older.
Thinner.
Alive.
Daniel placed the missing yacht drive on the table.
“I took it.”
“Why?”
“Because Richard was going to erase something.”
Richard denied that when confronted.
Daniel produced messages.
Richard had asked Martin how to “clean legacy authorizations” before
regulators accessed the server.
Martin insisted that meant correcting corrupted metadata.
Daniel believed it meant destroying evidence.
Forensic specialists examined the drive.
Both interpretations were incomplete.
Richard had attempted to remove duplicate forged authorizations bearing
Claire’s name.
He claimed he wanted to protect her.
But deleting them would also have concealed how long he knew about the
fraud.
Again, protection and self-protection were tangled together.
Daniel admitted he had not returned solely for justice either.
He owned shares that would increase dramatically if Richard lost control
of the company.
Claire looked around the room.
“Does anyone in this family do the right thing without also having a
financial motive?”
Nobody answered.
At least the silence was honest.
Then investigators traced the eight-million-dollar transfer.
It had not been initiated by Richard.
Or Daniel.
May you like
Or Vanessa.
The credentials belonged to Martin Hale.
