Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN IN RED
Charles’s driver had parked outside the mansion during the confrontation. Security video showed Sloane leaving through a side door with a large red handbag and walking near the vehicle for eleven seconds.
The trunk itself was outside the frame.
Sloane denied planting the laptop. She claimed Charles had recruited her two years earlier to monitor Derek and promised to protect her if she found financial misconduct.
She produced text messages from a number registered to Langford Capital.
Charles denied sending them.
This time, Emily did not automatically believe either side.
Priya traced the number to a prepaid corporate account created by Martin Kaye, Charles’s former chief security officer. Kaye had been fired after selling confidential information. He now worked for Northstar Meridian.
Sloane was not simply Derek’s mistress. She had entered Callahan Systems as Northstar’s intermediary. Her assignment was to encourage reckless expansion, create covenant defaults, and make the company cheap enough to acquire.
Derek knew about the acquisition scheme. He did not know Sloane had been instructed to frame him as the sole architect if regulators intervened.
Emily discovered that from a voice memo Sloane accidentally synchronized to a shared company tablet. In it, a Northstar executive said, “Once Callahan signs the sale, he becomes the fraud story. You become the cooperating witness.”
Emily could have sent the file directly to Derek.
Instead, she preserved it with counsel and gave it to the independent committee. Saving Derek privately would repeat the same pattern that had allowed him to hurt her: protecting the relationship from consequences.
The board confronted Sloane. She countered by releasing a video from the mansion. It showed Emily on her knees, but the angle hid the belt strike. The audio began with Emily saying, “She used your company money,” then cut to Derek shouting that Emily was unstable.
Online, people argued whether Emily staged her injuries to help her father seize the company.
The original recording remained on Sloane’s phone.
When police obtained a preservation order, she reported the phone stolen.
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The champagne glass from the mansion was still in evidence.
On its rim, investigators found not only Sloane’s DNA—but a partial fingerprint belonging to Martin Kaye.
