Chapter 5 - The Public Mask Slips
The executive floor of Morrison Development Partners occupied the thirty-fourth floor of a glass tower overlooking Market Street.
On Monday morning at ten-fifteen, Daniel Morrison slammed his leather briefcase onto his mahogany desk with enough force to rattle the brass desk set.
“Where is she, Diane?” he snarled, turning on his sister, who stood in the doorway of his office with her arms crossed over her wool trench coat. “Her phone is disconnected. Her car isn't at the house. Her friend Nina’s apartment is completely empty. If you know where she went, you tell me right now.”
Diane didn't enter the room. She stood beneath the walnut doorframe, looking at her brother with an expression of cold, weary disgust that he had never seen on her face before.
“I don't know where she is, Daniel,” Diane said. “And if I did, I would rather choke on broken glass than give you her address.”
Daniel’s face flushed a dark, mottled crimson. “She is my wife! She took three hundred thousand dollars out of our operating reserves on Friday morning! The payroll for the Devon site clears on Wednesday, and the account is short!”
“Then call Melissa Avery,” Diane said quietly. “Ask her to return the six hundred thousand you gave her to buy that carriage house in Chestnut Hill.”
Daniel froze, his fingers twitching against the edge of his briefcase. “You… you don't understand how commercial syndications work, Diane. That was an investment. Melissa’s firm is handling the branding—”
“Stop lying, Daniel,” Diane interrupted, her voice rising just enough to carry into the corridor where two senior project managers were pretending not to listen. “You slapped your wife across the face in front of twelve people at Thanksgiving dinner. You had your mistress sitting at our mother’s table. You have spent five years turning Claire into a ghost, and now that she’s finally walked out, you’re terrified because she took the ledgers with her.”
“She doesn't have the ledgers!” Daniel shouted.
“She has everything,” another voice said from the reception foyer.
Kathryn Vance stepped into the office, flanked by two uniformed constables from the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Department.
She wore a sharp charcoal suit that looked as though it had been tailored out of armor plate. She held a thick, blue-backed document bound with red legal tape.
“Mr. Daniel Morrison?” Kathryn asked, her tone carrying the terrifying calm of an executioner verifying an identity.
“Who the hell are you?” Daniel barked, stepping around his desk. “Get out of my private suite!”
“I am Kathryn Vance, legal counsel to Claire Morrison,” she said, handing the document to the senior constable, who stepped forward and pressed it firmly into Daniel’s chest. “You are formally served with a petition for Dissolution of Marriage on the grounds of Cruel and Barbarous Treatment, Spousal Assault, and Constructive Fraud.”
Daniel grabbed the papers, his eyes scanning the first page, his chest heaving. “Cruel treatment? Assault? She fell! She tripped over the rug in my mother’s living room!”
“Your sister Diane has already provided a sworn deposition to the contrary, Mr. Morrison,” Kathryn said smoothly, tilting her head toward Diane, who gave Daniel a single, unblinking nod of confirmation. “As have your cousins Richard and Thomas. Furthermore, the photograph of Mrs. Morrison’s facial contusions, taken at Bryn Mawr Hospital’s emergency department at three a.m. on Friday, has been entered into the record under seal.”
Daniel’s jaw slackened. He looked at Diane, his eyes wide with a mixture of betrayal and wild panic. “Diane… you gave a deposition against your own brother?”
“You hit her, Daniel,” Diane whispered, her voice trembling with unshed tears. “You hit her, and then you told her it was her fault. Our father did that to our mother for thirty years, and we spent our childhoods hiding under the stairs while she told the neighbors she had walked into a cupboard. I will not let you turn this family into that house again.”
Daniel took a step backward, his knees bumping against his executive chair.
“In addition,” Kathryn Vance continued, stepping closer to the desk, her voice dropping into a register that made the room feel twenty degrees colder, “the Honorable Judge Hastings signed an emergency forensic discovery order forty minutes ago. All personal and commercial bank accounts associated with Morrison Development, Oakridge Holdings, and Blue Horizon Design are currently under judicial attachment. You have thirty-six hours to surrender the corporate servers for digital imaging.”
“The servers?” Daniel choked out, his voice cracking into a high, thin pitch. “That’s proprietary commercial data! I have municipal contracts pending!”
“Then I suggest you retain competent criminal counsel, Mr. Morrison,” Kathryn said, turning on her heel. “Because the Department of Banking and Securities received a copy of the Chestnut Hill transfer invoices at nine o'clock this morning.”
May you like
As Kathryn and the constables walked out through the double glass doors, Daniel dropped into his chair, the legal papers scattering across his blotter like fallen leaves.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking so violently that he could not pick up his fountain pen.
