Chapter 6 - THE PRESS CONFERENCE THAT BACKFIREDBy sunset, Daniel Cho had been missing for three hours.
The police issued no public alert.
Investigators did not want Dominic or Malcolm to know how much they understood.
Privately, Dana told us the bank footage had likely been disrupted by someone with technical access. The security contractor responsible for the bank’s surveillance system had previously worked for Prescott Capital.
Another connection.
Another coincidence no reasonable person could believe.
Charlotte paced the dining room.
“My father knows where Daniel is.”
“We cannot prove that yet,” Maya said.
“I can make him tell me.”
“No.”
“He still thinks he can control me.”
“That makes you useful as a witness, not bait.”
Charlotte stopped pacing.
“I spent my entire life being protected from consequences while other people paid for my family’s decisions. I’m done standing in safe rooms while someone else disappears.”
I understood her anger.
But I also understood how quickly anger could become recklessness.
“Dominic expects us to react emotionally,” I said. “He built his entire strategy around it.”
Charlotte looked at me.
“So what do we do?”
“We let him believe it is working.”
The idea formed slowly.
Dominic’s greatest weakness had never been greed.
It was certainty.
He believed he understood people.
He believed Charlotte would return to him because her social position depended on the marriage.
He believed I would retreat because public humiliation frightened me.
He believed employees would remain silent because they needed their jobs.
We needed him to keep believing those things.
The next morning, Charlotte contacted Dominic.
She told him she was frightened.
She said Maya had manipulated her.
She claimed she wanted to repair the marriage privately.
Dominic responded within two minutes.
I watched her read the message.
“He wants me to meet him at the Harbor Crown.”
“Of course he does,” Maya said. “It is his territory.”
Dana arranged surveillance and gave Charlotte a concealed recording device.
The meeting would take place in the hotel’s presidential suite.
Dominic believed he still controlled the property because several senior managers remained loyal to him.
What he did not know was that Arthur Bell had quietly authorized investigators to access the security system.
At noon, Charlotte entered the Harbor Crown through a private garage.
She wore a conservative gray dress and her wedding ring.
Dominic opened the suite door himself.
Through the recording device, we heard his voice.
“I knew you would come back.”
Charlotte did not answer immediately.
Then she said, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“You were emotional.”
“I watched you deny your daughter.”
“She may not be mine.”
“You told me you knew she was pregnant.”
“I knew she claimed to be pregnant.”
“What about Owen?”
Silence.
Dominic’s voice changed.
“Who told you that name?”
“Is he your son?”
“Charlotte, listen carefully. Evelyn is using stolen information to turn you against me.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Owen’s mother was an employee who became obsessed with me.”
I closed my eyes.
Another unstable woman.
Another story.
“Did you sleep with her?” Charlotte asked.
“It was one mistake.”
“Is Owen yours?”
“I never took a test.”
“Because you threatened his mother?”
“I protected everyone from a scandal.”
“You paid her through Northpoint.”
“That was a private settlement.”
“With company money?”
Dominic’s footsteps crossed the suite.
“Take off the recorder.”
Charlotte’s breathing stopped.
“What?”
“I know how your father’s investigators work. Take it off.”
We heard fabric move.
Dana signaled to the officers positioned nearby.
Before they entered, another voice spoke.
Malcolm.
“You always were a poor liar, Charlotte.”
Charlotte had not expected her father to be inside the suite.
Neither had we.
Malcolm continued.
“Give me the device.”
“No.”
“Do not embarrass yourself further.”
“You forged my signature.”
“I protected your future.”
“You used my name to steal Evelyn’s shares.”
“Evelyn’s shares should never have existed.”
I felt my heartbeat quicken.
“Her father was a provincial investor who got lucky,” Malcolm said. “Dominic turned that money into something valuable.”
“My father’s money built the company,” I whispered.
Maya placed a hand on my arm.
In the suite, Charlotte asked about Daniel.
Malcolm laughed softly.
“You have spent too much time watching television.”
“Where is he?”
“Mr. Cho made a series of unfortunate choices.”
“What did you do?”
“I corrected a problem.”
Dana raised her hand.
Officers moved toward the suite.
Then Dominic spoke.
“Charlotte, your father is trying to protect us.”
“By kidnapping someone?”
“No one said kidnapped.”
“Where is Daniel?”
Malcolm’s voice hardened.
“Give me the recorder.”
A struggle followed.
Fabric tore.
Charlotte shouted.
Dana ordered entry.
The suite door burst open.
For several seconds, the recording became chaotic.
Commands.
Footsteps.
Dominic shouting that no one had a warrant.
Charlotte crying out.
Then Malcolm’s voice, calm even as officers entered.
“You have made a serious mistake.”
When the live audio stabilized, Dana confirmed that Charlotte was safe.
Malcolm and Dominic had not been arrested because the officers lacked enough evidence to detain them for Daniel’s disappearance.
But the recording was preserved.
Malcolm’s statement about “correcting a problem” was not a confession.
It was, however, deeply damaging.
Charlotte returned to the brownstone with a torn sleeve and a bruise forming around her wrist.
My mother brought ice.
Charlotte refused to cry.
“I gave Dominic every chance to tell the truth.”
“Men like him consider the truth a negotiation,” I said.
That afternoon, Dominic announced a press conference.
Against his attorney’s advice, he planned to address the allegations personally.
He believed visibility would restore control.
The event took place in the Harbor Crown ballroom, the same room where Vale Meridian had celebrated its tenth anniversary.
Dominic stood beneath the company logo.
Malcolm stood beside him.
They announced that the merger would proceed despite “malicious interference.”
Dominic claimed the board’s suspension was invalid.
Malcolm accused regulators of responding to fabricated evidence.
Then they displayed a photograph of Charlotte entering the hotel.
Dominic smiled sadly.
“My wife and I remain united.”
Charlotte stared at the screen.
“He knew the cameras would capture me.”
A reporter asked why Charlotte was not present at the press conference.
Dominic replied that she was resting after an emotionally overwhelming weekend.
Charlotte stood.
“No.”
Maya looked at her.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m finished letting him speak for me.”
Before anyone could stop her, Charlotte opened her social-media account and began a live broadcast.
Within minutes, thousands of viewers joined.
She positioned the phone on the dining-room table.
Her bruised wrist was clearly visible.
“My name is Charlotte Prescott Vale,” she began. “Yesterday, my husband told the world that his former wife’s newborn daughter was not his child.”
Dominic’s press conference continued on television behind her.
“I believed many lies about Evelyn Mercer. I repeated some of them. For that, I am ashamed.”
The number of viewers doubled.
“My husband also claimed that our marriage remains united. It does not.”
She removed her ring.
“Dominic brought me to Evelyn’s hospital room less than two hours after our ceremony because he needed Evelyn’s signature on documents connected to a four-hundred-million-dollar merger.”
My phone began vibrating with incoming alerts.
Charlotte continued.
“My name was forged on a share-transfer document. I have reported the forgery to investigators.”
On television, someone handed Dominic a phone.
His face changed as he saw Charlotte’s broadcast.
“My father, Malcolm Prescott, knew Evelyn was pregnant. Both he and Dominic discussed preventing the child from receiving rights connected to a family trust.”
The viewer count passed one million.
“And today, my father described a missing financial officer as a problem he had corrected.”
Dominic abandoned the podium.
Reporters shouted questions.
Malcolm remained frozen beneath the lights.
Charlotte leaned closer to the camera.
“Daniel Cho is missing. Lena Brooks is missing. If anything happens to either of them, the public now knows exactly where investigators should look.”
Then she ended the broadcast.
For a moment, no one in the dining room spoke.
Maya finally exhaled.
“That was legally reckless.”
“I know.”
“It was also effective.”
Within an hour, three board members resigned from committees connected to Dominic.
The merger’s primary lender permanently withdrew.
Prescott Capital’s stock fell.
Employees began contacting investigators.
One hotel manager reported that Dominic had ordered archived surveillance erased.
Another produced invoices tied to Northpoint.
A former driver said he had taken Malcolm to the downtown bank shortly before Daniel disappeared.
The wall of silence had cracked.
At 7:40 p.m., Dana received a call from an anonymous number.
A man whispered an address.
Then he said, “Daniel is alive.”
The address led to an abandoned Vale Meridian storage facility near the harbor.
Police surrounded the building.
Inside, they found Daniel tied to a chair but conscious.
The audit was gone.
Daniel told investigators two masked men had forced him into a van after he left the bank.
He never saw their faces.
But he recognized one voice.
The head of Dominic’s private security team.
Police obtained an arrest warrant.
Before they could locate him, the security chief was found attempting to board a flight to Switzerland.
In his luggage, investigators discovered cash, three passports, and a key to a private storage locker.
The locker contained the missing audit.
It also contained photographs of me, Charlotte, Amelia, Owen, Daniel, and Lena.
Each photograph had been marked with a date.
Lena’s photograph carried the earliest one.
May you like
Beneath it, someone had written two words.
TRANSFER COMPLETE.
