Ashley: Turn those cameras off, Julian! I am ordering you as a major shareholder of Vance Logistics!
Julian: You don't hold any shares anymore, Ashley. The board froze your accounts at noon today.
Ashley: They can't freeze my shares without a majority proxy vote from the board of directors!
Julian: I hold sixty percent of the voting power under my father's original trust fund agreement.
Maya: She told me you signed divorce papers in New York last week, Julian... She showed me a forged legal seal.
Julian: I never went to New York, Maya. I spent the last three days inside the federal courthouse in Chicago securing this warrant.
Julian pulled a folded white paper with a bright blue state seal from his inside suit coat pocket.
Ashley’s hands began to shake violently, her gold clutch slipping through her fingers and clattering against the marble floor.
Ashley: A warrant? For what? What could a federal judge possibly charge me with?!
Julian: Wire fraud, grand larceny, corporate embezzlement, and attempted extortion of a protected minor.
Lily: Daddy, my shoe came off when she dragged Mommy across the room...
Julian looked down at his daughter’s small bare foot, noticing a red scrape along her tiny ankle where Ashley’s heel had grazed her.
A dark, murderous expression crossed his rugged face as he stepped past Maya, standing barely two feet from Ashley.
Julian: You dragged my wife? You put your filthy hands on my child's skin?
Ashley: She wouldn't listen to me! She refused to take the ten-million-dollar buyout check I offered her!
Maya: I told you that my family isn't for sale, Ashley! We built our life with our own honest hands!
Ashley: Honest hands? You were a kindergarten teacher when Julian met you! You brought nothing to this empire!
Julian: She brought love, loyalty, and a pure heart, things your corrupt family could never buy with all your offshore accounts!
Ashley: Your empire is going to collapse without the Vance maritime shipping contracts, Julian!
Julian: The Vance shipping contracts were cancelled thirty minutes ago by the Department of Transportation.
Ashley: Cancelled?! My father spent twenty years establishing those naval shipping lanes!
Julian: Your father was detained at the Port of Houston this morning by federal customs agents.
Ashley stumbled back another step, her back hitting the white grand staircase as her knees began to wobble.
Ashley: You... you reported my father to the customs bureau?
Julian: He was using Sterling cargo containers to smuggle untaxed luxury vehicles and forged bearer bonds across international waters.
Maya: That's why she was so desperate today... She knew the authorities were closing in, and she needed my signature to frame me as the fall guy!
Julian: Exactly. She wanted the police to find thirty million dollars routed through your personal teacher pension account.
Ashley: You were supposed to be trapped in that Chicago blizzard until tomorrow evening!
Julian: I chartered a private emergency jet the moment the federal task force unsealed your father's phone records.
Lily: Mommy, the bad lady looks like she's going to cry now.
Maya: Don't look at her, sweetie. Keep holding Daddy's hand.
Julian reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, clicking the speaker button with cold deliberation.
Julian: Captain Miller, you can bring your men through the front gates now.
Outside the tall arched windows of the foyer, the distant scream of police sirens began to rise through the afternoon wind.
Ashley spun around toward the rear service exit, but the heavy steel kitchen doors clicked shut and locked from the outside.