Chapter 7 – His Own Brother Sold Him Out for a Price
After Keely agreed to help me, we spent the next two days gathering every scrap of evidence we could find.
Vera worked around the clock, and Keely gave me passwords to email accounts I never knew existed.
But the real breakthrough came from the forensic accountant.
He called me on a Thursday afternoon, his voice tight with urgency.
“Azalea, I found a series of transfers that don’t match any of your vendors.
They go to an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.
The account is registered to a shell company, but the signatory is a man named Miles.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
Miles was Dunstan’s younger brother.
I had known him for fifteen years.
He was the quiet one, the one who always seemed a little nervous around me, but I had never thought much of it.
Now I knew why.
“Can you trace it?”
I asked.
“I already did.
The account has received over four hundred thousand dollars from your company in the last eighteen months.
And there’s more.
Miles has a separate personal account that’s been paying for Keely’s rent, her car, and a lot of other things.
It looks like he was the one handling the money while Dunstan played the part of the loving husband.”
I gripped the phone so hard my knuckles turned white.
“Where is he now?”
“He’s in town.
I have an address.”
I called Keely immediately.
“We’re going to see Miles,” I said.
“Now?”
“Right now.”
We drove to a modest house in the suburbs, the kind of place you’d never expect to find a man who had helped steal hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Miles answered the door in sweatpants and a stained T-shirt.
When he saw me, his face went pale.
“Azalea,” he stammered.
“What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk,” I said, pushing past him into the house.
Keely followed and closed the door behind us.
Miles backed into the living room, his eyes darting between us.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he said quickly.
“Dunstan made me.
He said he’d ruin me if I didn’t help.”
“Help with what, exactly?”
I asked.
“The transfers.
The shell company.
All of it.”
“You stole from me,” I said.
“You stole from my company.
My employees.
Their livelihoods.”
“I know.
I’m sorry.
I have the records.
All of them.
I kept copies because I was afraid he’d turn on me.”
He led us to a small office in the back of the house and opened a safe.
Inside were stacks of papers: bank statements, transfer receipts, and a ledger with dates and amounts.
“This is everything,” he said.
“Every transaction.
Every account.
I can give you access to the offshore account.
It’s still active, but I can freeze it from my end.”
I stared at him.
“Why now?”
“Because he threatened my family.
He said if I didn’t keep helping him, he’d hurt my wife and kids.
I couldn’t let that happen.”
I took the documents and handed them to Keely.
“Can you verify these?”
I asked her.
She nodded.
“I’ve seen some of these before.
They’re real.”
I turned back to Miles.
“You’re going to testify.
You’re going to tell the court everything.”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“I will.”
Within an hour, my lawyer had enough evidence to file for a freezing order on all of Dunstan’s accounts, including the offshore one.
By the end of the day, Dunstan was served with a lawsuit and a court order preventing him from touching a single cent of our money.
I thought that would be the end of it.
But that night, my phone rang.
It was Dunstan.
I almost didn’t answer, but I wanted to hear what he had to say.
“You think you’ve won,” he said, his voice cold and steady.
“But you’ve forgotten something, Azalea.
I know about your past.
The loan default.
The bankruptcy.
How do you think your precious investors will react when they find out you’re a fraud?”
I felt my heart skip a beat.
But I didn’t let him hear the fear in my voice.
“Do what you have to do,” I said.
And I hung up.
Chapter 8 – My Deepest Secret Became My Strongest Weapon
Dunstan’s threat kept me up all night.
He was right about one thing: I had a past I wasn’t proud of.
Twenty years ago, I started my first fashion company with a small loan and a lot of hope.
But the market shifted, and I couldn’t keep up.
I defaulted on the loan and had to declare bankruptcy.
It took me ten years to rebuild, to pay back every cent, and to start over with the company I had now.
