Chapter 5 - The Friday Morning Audit
By 8:30 AM on Friday—Black Friday, when the rest of the city was fighting over discount electronics—Zoe’s dining room table looked like a war room.
Spread across the polished teakwood were tax returns, corporate partnership agreements, joint account statements, and mortgage deeds for three different properties, including a sprawling summer estate in Lake Geneva.
I sat at the end of the table wearing a pair of Zoe’s silk pajamas and drinking black coffee, while David—Zoe’s husband and a senior forensic accountant at one of Chicago’s top financial firms—tapped furiously on his laptop keyboard, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“This is fascinating,” David muttered, adjusting his glasses as he scrolled through a PDF file.
“Fascinating how?” Zoe asked, pacing behind him with a cup of espresso. “Tell me we have enough to freeze their corporate liquidity.”
David turned his laptop screen toward us. A complicated web of LLCs, offshore accounts, and subsidiary holdings lit up the monitor in bright red and blue charts.
“Frank Peterson isn’t just a wealthy real estate developer,” David explained, pointing a pen at a shadowy holding company registered in Delaware. “For the last five years, Carter & Peterson Development has been routing massive chunks of corporate revenue through a network of shell companies controlled entirely by Carol and Frank—money that was supposed to be split equally between Frank and his silent business partner, Arthur Vance.”
I blinked. “Arthur Vance? Wait... isn’t that Megan’s husband?”
“Bingo,” David smiled grimly. “Megan’s husband Arthur is supposedly a junior partner at a wealth management firm, but according to these corporate filings, he’s been acting as the primary signatory for a slush fund that has siphoned over four million dollars away from the main corporation over the last thirty-six months.”
Zoe stopped pacing. A slow, predatory smile spread across her face.
“Let me get this straight,” Zoe said softly. “Frank and his son-in-law Arthur have been embezzling millions from their own corporate partners and tax authorities through an illegal shell company network, while Mark—who is listed as the corporate secretary—has been signing off on the fraudulent audits?”
“That’s correct,” David nodded. “If this gets handed over to the IRS and the state attorney general’s office, Frank, Arthur, and Mark are looking at multiple felony counts of wire fraud, tax evasion, and corporate malfeasance. They could easily face ten to fifteen years in federal prison.”
I sat back in my chair, staring at the screen.
For seven years, the Petersons had looked down on me as a working-class girl who didn't understand how high society operated. They had treated me like an employee in their family corporation, tolerating my presence because I brought home a respectable salary from my marketing director job and kept Mark happy.
And all the while, their entire empire was built on a rotting foundation of financial fraud and criminal conspiracy.
My phone buzzed loudly on the wooden table.
I looked down at the screen.
Incoming Call: Mark Peterson.
I let it ring. It went to voicemail.
Ten seconds later, another text popped up:
Mark: Chloe, please answer the phone. Mom is crying, Dad is furious, and Megan won't stop screaming. We need to talk about what happened last night. This is getting out of hand.
I slid the phone face down across the table.
May you like
“He still thinks this is about last night's argument,” I said quietly.
“Let him think whatever he wants,” Zoe said, grabbing her phone. “Because by Monday morning, when my divorce petition hits his desk alongside a federal financial audit notice, Mark is going to realize that the holiday dinner table wasn't the only thing his family destroyed.”
