Graham turned toward her.
“Do not say anything without counsel.”
She stared at him.
“You said the authorization was real.”
“It was supposed to be.”
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
Celeste glanced at Nora.
Nora wrote something on a legal pad.
The elevator opened onto the executive floor.
Ten minutes earlier, the gala guests had admired the city through those glass walls.
Now the floor felt like a sealed chamber.
We entered the main boardroom.
Martin took the chair at the head of the table.
Two other directors joined by secure video.
Nora placed Sienna’s silver access card, the forged transfer, and the printed access logs in front of them.
Graham remained standing.
“This is a domestic dispute,” he said.
“Evelyn found a dress and decided to burn down a company.”
I sat across from him.
“The dress led me to an access card.
The card led me to eleven midnight entries.
Those entries led me to a forged transfer of my shares.”
He looked at the directors.
“Listen to how rehearsed she sounds.”
Celeste leaned back in her chair.
“Evidence often sounds organized.”
Nora began with the digital record.
The draft transfer had been created on Sienna’s workstation thirty-seven days earlier.
It had been revised nineteen times.
Graham’s account had opened it seven times.
A scan of my signature, copied from a foundation donation form, had been inserted into the final version.
The document was scheduled to appear inside the gala packet beneath a routine pledge page.
Had I signed the packet where Graham marked it, he planned to claim I had approved the entire bundle.
Sienna’s breathing became shallow.
“I did not know the signature was forged,” she said.
Graham turned toward her.
“Stop talking.”
“No,” she said, louder.
“You told me Evelyn had already agreed and that the gala signature was just a formality.”
“You were paid to execute communications strategy.”
“You told me I would run the new holding company.”
That changed the room.
Martin folded his hands.
“What new holding company?”
Sienna looked at Graham, waiting for him to rescue her.
He stared back with cold warning.
She understood then that he would sacrifice her before admitting anything.
“The Vale-Whitaker Strategic Group,” she said.
“A Nevada entity.
He said it would hold the Sterling shares temporarily, then use them as collateral for the Armitage acquisition.”
Nora’s face tightened.
The Armitage acquisition had been Graham’s obsession for nearly a year.
The target company owned a financial-data platform that would have doubled Whitaker Capital’s reach.
The board had refused to approve the deal because Graham wanted to borrow too aggressively.
My stake was the asset he needed to make the financing work without their consent.
