Chapter 4 - The Corporate Guillotine
On Monday morning, Arthur marched into the towering glass-and-steel headquarters of Vance Holdings in downtown Los Angeles, intending to execute his vengeance. He had spent the entire weekend raging to Victoria about how he was going to destroy me in court and leave me begging on the streets.
He swiped his keycard at the private executive elevator. The light flashed a harsh, unforgiving red. The doors remained firmly shut.
Arthur aggressively swiped it again, cursing under his breath. Before he could demand an explanation from the lobby concierge, the head of corporate security approached him, accompanied by two men in dark windbreakers bearing the letters FBI.
“Arthur Vance,” one of the federal agents announced, pulling a pair of handcuffs from his belt. “You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering.”
Arthur’s arrogant facade completely shattered. The color drained from his face as the entire lobby of his own company stopped to watch him being pushed against the security desk. “This is a mistake! I demand to speak to my board of directors!” he shouted, his voice cracking with sheer panic.
“Your board of directors is currently cooperating fully with our investigation, Mr. Vance,” the agent replied coldly, clicking the steel cuffs securely around his wrists. “They received a very detailed, anonymous package this morning outlining the exact offshore accounts you used to drain the employee pension fund. You are permanently relieved of your duties.”
While Arthur was being loaded into the back of a federal vehicle, Victoria was waking up in the lavish Bel Air estate. She walked down the sweeping marble staircase in a silk robe, expecting to find the private chef preparing her morning cappuccino. Instead, she found my elite team of divorce attorneys standing in the foyer, accompanied by local law enforcement.
“Excuse me, who let you in?” Victoria demanded, crossing her arms and attempting to project the authority of the lady of the house.
“We let ourselves in, Ms. Hayes,” my lead attorney stated calmly, handing her a thick stack of legal documents. “This property is solely owned by a trust belonging to my client, the true Mrs. Vance. As Arthur Vance has been indicted on federal fraud charges and all of his assets are currently frozen by the government, he no longer has any legal standing to grant you residence here. You have exactly thirty minutes to pack your belongings and vacate the premises, or you will be arrested for trespassing.”
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Victoria’s jaw dropped. The realization hit her with the force of a freight train. The billionaire she thought she had successfully stolen was not a billionaire at all; he was a broke, disgraced criminal facing decades in federal prison.
Without Arthur’s stolen money to fund her designer lifestyle, Victoria’s profound, undying love for him evaporated in less than a minute. She sprinted upstairs, frantically throwing her clothes into suitcases, terrified of being implicated in the embezzlement scheme. She fled the estate in a rideshare, abandoning Arthur entirely before he was even processed at the federal holding facility.
