Victoria: That is an outrageous accusation! I never paid anyone to touch your personal property!
Ethan: You wired two hundred thousand dollars to Thomas Miller's account in the Cayman Islands last Tuesday.
Victoria: That wire transfer was an investment in a luxury real estate fund! My father approved it!
Ethan: Thomas Miller is an estate notary, Victoria. He doesn't manage luxury real estate funds.
Victoria: He has private consulting ventures on the side! Everyone in Dallas uses foreign holding companies!
Ethan: Thomas Miller was detained by federal agents at Dallas Love Field airport two hours ago, Victoria.
Victoria's hands began to shake so violently that her gold sequins rattled against the marble floor.
Victoria: Detained...? Why on earth would federal agents care about a private family notary?!
Ethan: Because he carried a flash drive containing forty-two confidential files stolen from my corporate computer.
Rosa: Merciful God... She was copying company files while you were at the shipping docks, sir!
Ethan: Not just company files, Rosa. She copied Clara's original medical charts from the hospital.
Victoria pushed herself back until her spine hit the heavy mahogany wainscoting.
Victoria: Clara had heart failure! The hospital records are completely irrelevant to anything!
Ethan: Clara didn't have heart failure until your father's pharmaceutical firm supplied her private clinic.
The grandfather clock ticked loudly in the corner, the sound like a hammer hitting an anvil.
Victoria: That was an experimental cardiovascular drug approved by the federal health board!
Ethan: The drug was pulled from clinical trials six months before your father shipped it to my wife's doctor.
Victoria: My father was trying to save her life! He offered the medicine as a personal favor to your family!
Ethan: Your father knew Clara held sixty percent of the voting shares in our maritime logistics network.
Victoria: Business competition has nothing to do with personal medical tragedies, Ethan!
Ethan: With Clara gone, your family moved straight in to propose a joint corporate merger.
Victoria: We offered you thirty million dollars in fresh liquidity to keep your cargo vessels moving!
Ethan: That thirty million dollars was embezzled directly from the municipal port workers' pension reserve.
Victoria gasped, her hand flying to her throat as her painted lips began to quiver.
Victoria: That is slander! Vance Maritime has spotless financial records across the entire country!
Ethan: Vance Maritime was raided by thirty federal marshals at nine o'clock this morning, Victoria.
Victoria: No... No! That's impossible! My father had breakfast with the state attorney general yesterday!
Ethan: The state attorney general signed the sealed search warrants forty-eight hours ago.
Victoria: You're lying! You're making up wild stories to justify calling off our engagement!
Ethan: Look at your phone sitting on the marble console table, Victoria.
Victoria scrambled forward on her hands and knees, snatching her gold smartphone with trembling fingers.
Her display was completely flooded with fifty-four missed calls and red breaking news alerts from the local press.
Victoria: 'Vance Maritime raided in massive fraud probe... Chairman Arthur Vance arrested on federal racketeering charges'...
Ethan: Your father's offshore accounts in Panama and Zurich were frozen by court order at noon.
Victoria: Everything... Everything my father built! My trust fund! My luxury penthouse in Austin!
Ethan: Every single asset linked to the Vance name was seized under federal forfeiture statutes.
Victoria: You can't freeze my personal accounts! That money was gifted to me by my late mother!
Ethan: That money was stolen from retired dockworkers, Victoria. You don't own a single clean dollar.
Rosa: She spent twenty-five thousand dollars on that gold sequin gown yesterday, Mr. Sterling. The delivery box was on the counter.
Ethan: Bought with stolen pension funds while she plotted to murder an infant in his own crib.
Victoria dropped the phone onto the tiles, the glass screen cracking with a loud snap.
Victoria: I never plotted to murder anyone! The hot iron was an accident!
Ethan: You told my baby he wouldn't live to see a single dime of his inheritance, Victoria.
Victoria's breath caught in her throat, her eyes widening in pure, unmasked dread.
Victoria: You couldn't have heard that from the front foyer! The doors were shut tight!
Ethan looked slowly up toward the high carved ceiling molding thirty feet above the velvet sofa.
Ethan: I didn't need to hear it from the foyer, Victoria. The whole room was listening.