Chapter 6: The Man Behind It
Dorian Cassel's office was on the thirty-fourth floor of a building twelve blocks from mine.
I had been there once, eighteen months ago, when he made his first offer.
I had sat across from him at a glass desk and listened to his pitch and told him politely that my company was not for sale.
He had smiled and said he understood completely and offered me a very good bottle of wine on the way out.
I had not thought about him again until last night.
Daniel called me at seven in the morning.
"The forensics team finished the second phone.
There are forty-one messages between Isabella and Cassel going back nineteen months.
The earliest one is from three weeks before you and Isabella got engaged."
I was standing at Maya's bedroom door.
She was still asleep.
Mrs.
Calloway had stayed the night in the guest room at my request.
"What does the earliest message say?"
"He's asking her to confirm she's in position.
Those are his exact words.
*In position.*"
"Send everything to the fraud unit."
"Already done.
They want to meet with you this afternoon." A pause.
"Nathan, there's one more thing.
The acquisition counterparty — the company you were supposed to sign with yesterday."
"What about them?"
"Cassel has a silent stake in them.
Twelve percent, held through a shell registered in the Cayman Islands.
If your deal had closed yesterday, he would have profited by approximately thirty-one million dollars."
I looked at Maya's door.
"He needed the acquisition to close," I said.
"And he needed the deed transfer to happen first, so that if you later discovered Isabella and tried to exit the marriage, she would already control enough of your assets to force a settlement that would tie up your finances for years." Daniel's voice was careful and precise.
"It was a very clean plan."
"Until Maya found the emergency phone."
A long pause.
"Until Maya found the emergency phone," Daniel agreed.
The fraud unit meeting was at two o'clock.
I arrived with Daniel and my head of security and three years of archived camera footage on an encrypted drive.
The lead investigator was a woman named Grace Okafor.
She was direct and unhurried and she asked her questions in the same order the evidence demanded.
At the end of the meeting she looked at the encrypted drive on the table between us.
"The voice messages alone are enough to open a formal investigation into Cassel," she said.
"Combined with the shell company stake and the documented timeline, we have a strong case for conspiracy to commit securities fraud." She paused.
"Your cooperation will be noted."
"I want one thing understood," I said.
"Go ahead."
"My daughter's notebook.
Her medical examination report.
Her testimony, if it ever comes to that.
None of it gets used in a way that puts her in front of cameras or reporters or anyone she doesn't know."
Grace Okafor looked at me steadily.
"That is a reasonable request and I will do everything in my power to honor it."
I nodded.
"One more question," she said.
"Isabella.
Is she cooperating?"
Daniel answered before I could.
"Gerald Foss contacted us this morning.
She'll provide a full account of her arrangement with Cassel in exchange for reduced charges on the fraud counts.
She's giving him up completely."
Grace Okafor made a note.
"Then Cassel won't see it coming," she said.
She was right about that.
Three days later, at 9:15 in the morning, Dorian Cassel walked into his thirty-fourth-floor office, set his briefcase on his glass desk, and found two federal investigators already seated in his chairs.
May you like
He did not smile this time.
He did not offer anyone a bottle of wine.
