Chapter 6 - The Digital Trap
While Richard’s private digital forensics team worked through the night in the study, I sat by the window in my guest bedroom on the second floor, watching the rain beat against the glass. Down the hall, my three daughters were sleeping peacefully in soft, warm beds, completely unaware of the storm brewing around us.
Around 3:00 AM, there was a soft knock on my door.
Richard stood in the hallway, looking exhausted, his tie discarded and his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
"Mariana, come down to the study," he said quietly. "We found something."
I followed him downstairs. On his large mahogany desk, several laptops displayed glowing lines of code, server logs, and financial routing diagrams. A man I didn't recognize—a sharp-looking digital forensic analyst named David—turned his chair toward us.
"Mr. Monroe is right," David said without preamble, tapping a key on his keyboard. "The three-million-dollar wire transfer did not originate from Ms. Lopez’s old phone. In fact, that phone's hardware was deactivated by the carrier four years ago."
My heart leaped. "Then how did they make it look like I did it?"
"Spoofing," David explained, bringing up a complex flowchart on the main monitor. "The transfer was executed using an administrative master key belonging directly to Carden Holdings. The IP address traces back to a terminal located on the third floor of the Carden family mansion in Dallas—specifically, Theresa Carden’s private home office."
Richard crossed his arms, his jaw set in a hard line. "She framed her own former daughter-in-law to cover up the embezzlement of her own foundation funds."
"Worse than that," David added, clicking open another file. "While analyzing the metadata of the fourteen-million-dollar account, I found something fascinating. The account wasn't just opened by Diego Paredes. It was funded through a series of corporate dividends from an independent logistics firm in Amarillo that Diego owned completely separate from his mother's control."
I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand. "Diego owned his own business?"
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"Yes," Richard confirmed softly. "His mother tried to crush him, tried to make him believe he was penniless and entirely dependent on her. But Diego was smarter than she knew. He built a separate nest egg to protect you and your daughters. And when Theresa found out about it..."
Richard didn't need to finish the sentence. The terrible implication hung heavily in the air between us.
