There was also a copy of a message Dylan had sent to the transaction coordinator after one of the forged documents was questioned.
He had written that Brooke was traveling and had authorized him to correct the paperwork on her behalf.
Brooke had never given that authorization.
Dylan reached for the laptop.
Brooke pulled it away.
“Turn that off,” he said.
“No.”
“This is private financial information.”
“You told them to put it on the screen.”
“I thought it was one of Paige’s stunts.”
Brooke looked around at the guests, the flowers, the champagne tower, and the enormous portrait of herself and Dylan placed beside the terrace.
Then she said, “You thought humiliating your sister would be entertainment.”
Dylan’s voice dropped.
“This has nothing to do with her.”
“It has everything to do with her.
You were so sure she was powerless that you opened the evidence yourself.”
He reached for the laptop again.
This time, security stepped between them.
Dylan ordered the guards to move.
They looked at Brooke instead.
It was her family’s compound.
“Don’t let him touch the computer,” she said.
The guards remained where they were.
That was the first visible moment Dylan understood that the room no longer belonged to him.
His father’s friends were no longer smiling.
The investors near the terrace had begun whispering to each other.
Several guests took out their phones, not to record him, but to call attorneys, advisers, and business partners.
Every connection Dylan had spent years cultivating was watching him lose control.
Brooke asked whether there was a way to verify the files independently.
I told her Ryan’s number was included in the report.
She called him from another phone and placed him on speaker.
Ryan answered immediately.
He explained that he had preserved copies of the original records, documented where each file came from, and generated verification codes that would show whether anything had been changed.
Dylan interrupted him.
“You accessed private accounts illegally.”
Ryan remained calm.
“The records were provided by parties authorized to possess them.”
“Which parties?”
“That information will be provided to the appropriate attorneys and investigators.”
Dylan looked toward Brooke.
“You gave him our documents?”
“No,” she said.
“I didn’t know these documents existed.”
Ryan continued.
He explained that his analysis had started when irregular payments connected to the property deal were flagged during a separate review.
Once he followed the payment trail, Dylan’s name appeared repeatedly.
The pattern wasn’t an accident.
Each forged approval had removed a safeguard.
Each transfer had moved the money farther from the original transaction.
Each explanation Dylan sent afterward created cover for the previous step.
It was deliberate.
Dylan called Ryan a liar.
Then he called me one.
He took Brooke’s phone and shouted my name into it.
“You think you’ve won?”
I had pulled onto the shoulder of the road by then.
