Chapter 3 - The Midnight AuditThe offices of Vance & Sterling Forensic Accounting occupied the top three floors of a gleaming glass skyscraper overlooking the frozen Chicago River. Even at 10:30 PM on Christmas Eve, the building buzzed with the quiet, relentless hum of enterprise servers and late-night security details.
Marcus Vance—a brilliant, silver-haired forensic auditor who happened to be my cousin and the one person Roman had never managed to intimidate—was waiting for me by the private elevators. When the doors slid open and he saw me standing there in a heavy winter coat, eight and a half months pregnant with a hospital bag in my left hand, his face went completely rigid.
“Savannah?” Marcus stared, stepping forward to take the bag from my hand. “What in God’s name are you doing out on Christmas Eve? Where is Roman?”
“Roman is downtown celebrating the holidays with Claire Bennett,” I said evenly, walking past him into his sprawling glass-walled office.
Marcus stopped dead in his tracks. “Claire? The lobbyist he’s been working with on the downtown expansion project?”
“The very same,” I said, sinking into a leather armchair and unbuttoning my coat. “And before you ask, no, this isn't just an emotional indiscretion. For the past six months, while Roman has been telling me our personal liquidity is tight due to market fluctuations, he has been quietly transferring millions from our joint investment portfolios into unlisted commercial shell entities.”
Marcus’s professional instincts flared instantly. The shock on his face melted away, replaced by the razor-sharp focus of an elite financial investigator. He walked briskly to his desk, sat down behind his dual monitors, and spun his keyboard around.
“How do you know about the shell entities, Savannah?” Marcus asked, his fingers already flying across the mechanical keys. “Roman keeps his corporate holdings locked behind iron-clad privacy trusts. Even I haven't been able to breach those particular firewalls without a court order.”
“Because when Roman first started expanding his real estate portfolio three years ago, he used my signature as a co-guarantor on the foundational credit lines,” I said, pulling a folded manila envelope from my coat pocket and placing it on his desk. “He thought I was just a trophy wife who signed wherever she was told. But he never realized that every time he asked me to sign a document at the kitchen island, I copied the security hashes and kept duplicate digital records in a secure encrypted cloud folder that he doesn't know exists.”
Marcus opened the envelope, scanning the financial ledger printouts I had smuggled out of Roman’s home office safe two weeks prior. His eyes widened behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
“My God,” Marcus whispered, scrolling through line items of massive wire transfers, hidden mortgages, and offshore accounts. “He’s using your pre-owned estate and your personal inheritance as collateral for speculative development loans in the Loop. If these projects fail, Roman’s entire commercial empire collapses—and he’s taking your entire personal net worth down with him.”
“He’s not going to take anything down,” I said, standing up and resting my hands on the edge of his desk, looking down at him with absolute, unyielding resolve. “I want every single account frozen, every shell company subpoenaed, and every fraudulent signature flagged for federal investigation before the markets open on Monday morning.”
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Marcus looked up at me, a slow, grim smile spreading across his face. “You realize what this means, don’t you? Once I pull this trigger, Roman’s cards will decline, his credit lines will vaporize, and he won’t be able to buy a cup of coffee, let alone protect his corporate assets.”
“Good,” I said. “Let him feel what it’s like to lose control.”
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