Chapter 10
“Arrest?” Nate sputtered, his face blotching red. “Officer, there’s been a misunderstanding. The only vehicle in the garage is a company-owned Rolls-Royce. My intern manages the logs.”
Madison went pale.
“I—I just did the audit. I don’t know anything about a stolen car.”
Arthur Sterling frowned and looked between them.
“Nathaniel, what on earth is going on?”
I rose slowly, straightened my blazer, and walked over to Robert.
He handed me a thick stack of stapled documents.
“There’s no misunderstanding, officer,” I said, my voice carrying cleanly through the boardroom and into the stunned bullpen outside. “On Friday, Mr. Cross and Ms. Hayes confiscated the keys to a 2023 Rolls-Royce Cullinan. They threatened to terminate my employment and strip my equity if I did not surrender the vehicle.”
Nate laughed once, too sharply.
“Because it belongs to the company. Diana, you were embezzling company miles. Arthur, I apologize. A disgruntled employee is trying to make a scene.”
I dropped the papers onto the table directly in front of him.
“That is the original title, Nate. Pulled from the DMV this morning. That is the bill of sale. Those are the insurance binders for the last twenty-four months.”
His eyes landed on the bold print under Registered Owner.
Diana Mercer.
I watched the exact second his world collapsed.
His jaw slackened.
Color drained from his face.
He looked up at me as if I had transformed into something he had never properly understood.
“Diana,” he whispered. “What…?”
“I told you I was letting you use it,” I said. “Two years ago, when you were begging for a bridge loan and crying in my office because you couldn’t land a client in your beat-up BMW, I bought that car. I let you parade it around to save your ego. We never signed a lease. We never transferred the title.”
“You set me up!” Nate shouted, slamming both hands on the table.
“No,” I said coldly. “You set yourself up.”
I turned slightly.
“Robert, did the wire transfer clear this morning?”
“It did.”
He produced the bank confirmation from his briefcase.
“At eight a.m., my client wired one hundred twenty-eight thousand dollars to the corporate account of Cross Logistics. She was ordered to do so under threat of termination in a company-wide memo sent by Ms. Hayes and approved by Mr. Cross.”
Robert looked at the officers.
“Forcing a person to pay for the use of her own property under threat of financial ruin constitutes felony extortion. The interstate wire transfer triggers wire fraud. Refusing her access to the vehicle is grand theft.”
Madison made a sound halfway between a sob and a gasp.
The room exploded.