Chapter 5 - The Cole Conspiracy
"Get your hands off me!" Vanessa screamed as Detective Miller snapped heavy steel handcuffs around her wrists. "Do you know who my father is?! Arthur Cole will destroy all of you!"
"Your father can explain it to the judge, Miss Cole," Detective Miller replied coldly, pulling her toward the doorway. "We have a warrant for your arrest based on the hospital's medical report and the security footage Mr. Whitfield emailed to the station twenty minutes ago."
Vanessa kicked and struggled, her designer shoes dragging against the Persian rug as the officers led her out of the mansion, her hysterical screams fading down the corridor.
Eleanor stood up, shaking violently as she walked over to her son, wrapping her arms around his waist. "Oh, Adrien... thank God you saw the truth in time. If you had married that monster..."
"It's not over yet, Mother," Adrien said softly, looking at the security monitor.
Mark Vance stepped forward, holding a tablet. "Mr. Whitfield, while the police were processing the video, my team analyzed the vault access logs from 5:42 PM—three minutes before the fall."
Adrien looked at the tablet screen. "What did you find?"
"The secondary safe wasn't opened using Vanessa's code," Vance revealed smoothly. "It was opened using a master override cipher generated directly from the corporate office of Cole International."
Adrien’s eyes narrowed dangerously. "Arthur Cole."
"Yes, sir," Vance confirmed. "Arthur Cole accessed your estate's secondary vault remotely using a backdoor software key his IT department secretly installed when they updated our security systems last month."
Eleanor gasped. "Arthur was stealing from our private vault?"
"He wasn't just stealing the diamond bracelet, Mother," Adrien realized, a dark realization washing over him. "Arthur Cole's firm is facing bankruptcy. He needed a massive insurance claim and a scandal to blackmail us into completing the merger. He used his daughter to frame Grace, create a distraction, and siphon thirty million dollars in bearer bonds from our secondary safe!"
Adrien turned to Vance. "Where are those bearer bonds right now?"
"Arthur Cole's private jet is currently sitting on the tarmac at O'Hare International," Vance reported quickly. "Filing a flight plan for Zurich, Switzerland. He takes off in forty-five minutes."
May you like
Adrien grabbed his trench coat from the brass coat rack near the door.
"Call the Federal Aviation Administration and lock down that runway," Adrien ordered, his voice echoing with absolute authority. "We're going to O'Hare."
