Chapter 11 - THE BURNER PHONE
I stared at the black burner phone in my hands. The battery icon glowed a solid green.
Someone had been here recently. Someone had charged this phone.
I hesitated, then pressed the power button. There was only one contact saved in the phone book, listed simply as The Buyer.
I hit dial.
It rang twice before a deep, gravelly voice answered. "I told you not to call this number until the shares were transferred, Charles."
My breath hitched. I didn't speak.
"Charles?" the man demanded. "Did you secure the girl's trust fund or not?"
I hung up immediately, my hands shaking.
Olivia's trust fund.
When Charles was arrested, all of his assets were frozen, and the company was transferred to me. But Olivia’s trust fund—a multi-million dollar account set up when she was born—was managed by an independent trustee.
Charles’s lawyer.
I ran back into the house. "Olivia! Pack your bags. We have to go back to the city right now."
"Mom, what's wrong?" she asked, dropping a book she was reading.
"Your father isn't done yet."
We drove back to Chicago at record speed. I called Rebecca from the road.
"Rebecca, I need you to find everything you can on Charles’s lawyer, David Sterling. Who is he connected to?"
There was typing on the other end of the line. "David Sterling... Margaret, he's not just a lawyer. He sits on the board of a private equity firm that specializes in hostile takeovers. Why?"
"Because Charles isn't just trying to steal the company," I realized, the horrifying truth dawning on me. "He sold Olivia's trust fund to them in exchange for a buyout before he was arrested. He’s trying to bankrupt his own daughter to pay for his legal defense."
We arrived at David Sterling’s downtown office at four in the afternoon. I didn't bother making an appointment. I marched past the receptionist and kicked the heavy glass door of his office open.
Sterling looked up, startled, dropping his pen.
"Mrs. Bennett, you can't just—"
I slammed the burner phone onto his mahogany desk.
"The trust fund," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "If you move one cent of my daughter’s money, I will hand this phone, along with the audio logs from the telecommunications company, directly to the FBI. You’re an accessory to wire fraud."
Sterling stared at the phone, his arrogant posture deflating like a punctured tire.
"Charles told me he had the legal right to liquidate it," Sterling stammered, raising his hands defensively.
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"Charles has the right to a phone call from a federal penitentiary, and that’s it," I leaned over the desk. "You are going to transfer full executorship of that trust to me, right now, or you're going to share a cell with him."
Sterling swallowed hard. He reached for his keyboard.
