Victoria: You're lying! You are fabricating this ridiculous story to justify assaulting your fiancee[cite: 1]!
Carter: Check your phone, Victoria. If the cellular towers haven't blocked your corporate accounts already[cite: 1].
Victoria reached into her small beaded clutch lying on the floor, pulling out her gold smartphone with shaking fingers[cite: 1].
Her screen was inundated with forty missed calls and urgent news alerts from the Boston Financial Chronicle[cite: 1].
Victoria: 'Vance Maritime Indicted on Multi-Million-Dollar Wire Fraud and Embezzlement Charges'... No! This can't be real[cite: 1]!
Carter: It is very real, Victoria. And the evidence came directly from your personal laptop in the master suite[cite: 1].
Victoria: You went through my personal computer?! That is an illegal breach of privacy[cite: 1]!
Carter: You logged into the estate's encrypted server network, Victoria. Every byte of data you transferred belongs to the Sterling corporate system[cite: 1].
Clara: Mr. Sterling, Toby needs an ice pack on this wrist right away. The swelling is starting to puff up[cite: 1].
Carter: Take him into the private sitting room, Clara. Have Dr. Reynolds examine him the moment he arrives at the gate[cite: 1].
Toby: Daddy, don't leave me! Please stay with me[cite: 1]!
Carter: Daddy is right behind you, champion. Go with Clara for two minutes while I handle this[cite: 1].
Clara lifted the seven-year-old gently into her arms, carrying him toward the double doors of the sitting room[cite: 1].
Victoria scrambled to her feet, leaning heavily against the wall as she smoothed down her emerald green dress[cite: 1].
Victoria: Carter, please... Listen to me for one second! My father handled the shipping finances, not me[cite: 1]!
Carter: You signed three separate wire authorizations routing four million dollars through an offshore shell company in Bermuda, Victoria[cite: 1].
Victoria: That was an investment portfolio! My father told me it was a standard tax-sheltering vehicle[cite: 1]!
Carter: That money was stolen directly from Toby's maternal inheritance trust fund[cite: 1]!
Victoria's eyes flared with sudden, desperate venom as she raised her chin against the wall[cite: 1].
Victoria: Toby's trust fund?! That brat's mother was a common schoolteacher who died with zero net worth[cite: 1]!
Carter: Toby's mother was Sarah Montgomery, the sole heiress to the Montgomery Timber fortune, Victoria[cite: 1].
Victoria: Sarah Montgomery...? The Montgomery family that owned half of northern Maine[cite: 1]?!
Carter: Exactly. And she placed sixty million dollars in an irrevocable trust for Toby before she passed away[cite: 1].
Victoria: You told everyone in high society that Sarah was an ordinary kindergarten teacher[cite: 1]!
Carter: Sarah wanted our son to grow up with values, humility, and character, not surrounded by shallow social climbers like you[cite: 1].
Victoria: You tricked me! You let me believe I was marrying into your money while you hid another woman's fortune[cite: 1]!
Carter: I didn't trick you, Victoria. I tested you. And you failed every single standard of basic human decency[cite: 1].
Victoria's hands clenched into tight fists, her voice rising into a sharp, shrill screech that echoed down the long hall[cite: 1].
Victoria: We signed a prenuptial agreement on Friday afternoon! You owe me a twenty-million-dollar severance penalty if you break this engagement[cite: 1]!
Carter reached into his navy suit coat, pulling out a sealed document folder stamped with the gold seal of the Massachusetts Probate Court[cite: 1].
Carter: Paragraph fourteen of that prenuptial agreement states that any act of violence or felony endangerment against an immediate family member completely voids all financial settlements, Victoria[cite: 1].
Victoria: You can't prove violence! It was a minor scuffle in a private corridor! It's your word against mine[cite: 1]!
Carter pointed his finger upward toward the ornate crown molding directly above the hallway entrance[cite: 1].
A small, high-definition security camera was nestled inside the carved plaster, its green recording lens blinking steadily[cite: 1].
Carter: That camera captured every single frame of you dragging my son down this hall, Victoria[cite: 1].