Chapter 8 - THOMAS'S COUNTERATTACK
Thomas Wade did not surrender.
His attorney attacked Rachel.
She had disappeared voluntarily at first.
True.
She had used false names.
True.
She had hidden the twins’ location from Thomas.
True.
She had taken copies of business files.
True.
The defense argued Rachel and Olivia conspired to destroy Thomas during a divorce.
They called the financial records stolen.
They called the recordings manipulated.
They called the twins coached.
Then Thomas produced something devastating.
A message from Rachel to Olivia:
If I have to disappear for good, take the girls.
Ethan read it and felt sick.
The defense argued Rachel planned to abandon her children.
Then investigators recovered the rest of the encrypted conversation.
Rachel:
If I have to disappear for good, take the girls until I can get them safely. Do not let Thomas use them to make me come back.
Olivia:
I won’t. But we do this legally. Mara files emergency papers first.
Context.
Again.
The emergency custody filing had been drafted but never submitted because Rachel vanished before signing the affidavit.
Thomas had relied on incomplete fragments.
Then forensic accountants finished tracing the shell companies.
$4.7 million in diverted contract funds.
Forged guarantees.
False invoices.
A secret property purchase.
And payments to two men who had guarded Rachel at different locations.
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The case stopped being about whose marriage story sounded better.
It became records.
