The Man Behind the Security Footage
Chapter 02 - The Man Behind the Security Footage
Blake glanced at his hand, then quickly pushed it into his pocket.
“The video is too dark,” he said. “That could be anyone.”
Victoria turned to the security director. “Show the next camera.”
A second angle appeared. It showed Blake leaving Victoria’s private suite with his fist closed around something bright. He crossed the ballroom, waited until Sarah looked away, and slipped the necklace into Lily’s basket.
Guests gasped. Adrian stepped toward his cousin.
“Why would you frame a child?”
Blake’s expression changed from confidence to outrage. “Because the footage is edited. Sarah worked here. She knows the system.”
Sarah shook her head. “I was an accountant. I never had access to security.”
Victoria asked the guards to search Blake. Inside his jacket they found a key card for the private suite, a one-way airline ticket, and a flash drive labeled FOUNDATION ARCHIVE.
Blake claimed the items were related to work, but Sarah recognized the drive. It had disappeared from her desk the day she was fired.
“That contains the original financial records,” she said.
Adrian inserted the drive into the ballroom computer. Dozens of spreadsheets appeared on the screen. Over fourteen months, nearly four million dollars had been transferred from the foundation into consulting companies that existed only on paper.
Every transfer had Blake’s authorization.
Yet one detail made Sarah’s stomach tighten. Several payments also carried Adrian’s electronic signature.
Victoria faced her son. “Did you approve these?”
Adrian looked at the records in disbelief. “Blake told me they were hospital construction invoices.”
“You signed without checking?”
“I trusted him.”
Blake suddenly grabbed Lily’s basket and overturned it. Petals scattered across the marble floor. Hidden beneath the lining was a small black device.
“A transmitter,” he announced. “Sarah planted it to record us.”
Sarah had never seen it before.
Lily wiped her tears. “That man gave it to me.”
She pointed toward a waiter standing near the service doors.
The waiter dropped his tray and ran.
Security guards chased him into the hallway. Blake used the confusion to snatch the flash drive from the computer and race toward the opposite exit.
Before he reached it, Victoria pressed a button beneath the table.
The ballroom doors locked.
Blake turned slowly. His polished smile was gone.
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“You think this is about a necklace?” he said. “That drive contains enough information to destroy the entire Sterling family.”
Then the lights went out.
