Sarah walked over to her glass desk, her hands still shaking as she pulled a black laptop out of her leather bag.
She opened the encrypted financial portal, typing in her father's private security code.
A few seconds later, rows of red numbers flashed across the bright screen.
Sarah: Four million dollars... he drained four million dollars in less than six weeks.
The quiet ring of her smartphone broke the silence of the room.
Sarah pressed the speaker button, setting the phone down on the glass desk.
Sarah: Mark, are you seeing these numbers on the server?
Mark: I'm looking at the ledger right now, Sarah. It's worse than we thought.
Mark Vance was her father's most trusted corporate attorney, having managed the family estate for over twenty years.
Mark: Victor didn't just transfer funds to the Cayman accounts. He used your father's digital signature to authorize a private loan against the penthouse property.
Sarah gripped the edge of the desk, her knuckles turning bone white.
Sarah: He put a mortgage on my home?!
Mark: A five-million-dollar mortgage with a private lending firm owned by his father, Marcus Sterling.
Sarah: They were trying to force a foreclosure to take the penthouse from me.
Mark: Exactly. If you default on the first payment next week, Marcus can seize the property legally under the loan terms.
Sarah: That loan was fraudulent, Mark! My father was in the intensive care unit on the date listed on that contract!
Mark: We know that, Sarah, but we have to prove in court that Victor forged the digital signature.
Sarah: What about the hospital records? Can we subpoena the ICU entry logs?
Mark: I already requested the medical logs, but Victor's uncle is the chief of surgery at St. Jude's. They are dragging their feet on releasing the documents.
Sarah stood up, pacing back and forth across the white marble floor.
Sarah: They have the whole family involved in this scam, don't they?
Mark: The Sterling family has been broke for two years, Sarah. Their luxury cars and summer houses are all leveraged with high-interest debt.
Sarah: They married Victor off to me just to drain my father's fortune to cover their own losses.
Mark: Precisely. And now that your father is incapacitated, they're making their final move to take full control of Sterling Group before the annual audit next month.
Sarah: How long do we have before the emergency board meeting tomorrow?
Mark: Ten hours. The board convenes at eight o'clock tomorrow morning.
Sarah: Then we need that forgery proof before the market opens at nine.
Mark: Sarah... there is one person who might have the master security key to the hospital database.
Sarah stopped pacing, looking directly at the phone.
Sarah: Who?
Mark: Nurse Clara. She was on duty the night your father was admitted, and she refused to sign Victor's non-disclosure agreement.
Sarah: Send me her address, Mark. I'm going to see her right now.