Chapter 1 - The Trap
At 9:00 a.m., I walked into the Vance Medical corporate headquarters.
I didn’t go to the reception desk.
Margaret Heller met me in the underground parking garage and escorted me to a secure conference room.
Sitting at the heavy mahogany table were two corporate auditors and a federal agent.
Margaret plugged my phone into a secure drive and pulled up the photograph.
The image of Julian, Victoria, and the blue folder filled the massive screen.
The federal agent zoomed in on the documents resting on my nightstand.
"Those are the sealed technical scores for the new forty-million-dollar logistics contract," Margaret explained quietly.
Victoria’s company had been consistently underbidding their competitors by exact, impossible margins for months.
The internal investigators had suspected a leak.
But they didn't have proof.
Until Julian decided to leave the evidence in our bedroom while he slept with the bidder.
"We are letting him announce the contract award on Friday," the federal agent said.
"Why?" I asked, tracing the splint on my fractured finger.
"Because right now, it's just a corporate ethics violation," Margaret said coldly. "But when he signs the final award document, it becomes federal wire fraud."
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They needed me to keep him comfortable.
They needed him to believe he had won.
