Page 145 of Cruel Lies

With a serious nod, he waves for me to proceed.

I click to the first slide.

"One," I say. "Your firm opened a file for the divorce proceedings of a Mr. Todd Bradshaw, correct? As retainer for your services, he threw one stack of cash on your desk, which you acknowledge you kept. A cross-check against his marital joint bank account shows twelve thousand dollars withdrawn. But this right here is the Akov Firm accounts receivable tied to that file." I rotate the laptop a little more so he can see the numbers clearly. "As you can see, millions of dollars have moved through it.Millions, Ronan. So either you did four hundred years of legal work in six weeks, or almost every dollar that passed through that account is dirty."

His eyes expand, ever so slightly. The man doesn't give off many tells, but this has to be one of them.

Seven more chances to break him.

"Two." I bring up the next one. "You told me to my face that you paid off my company's forty-one-thousand-dollar debt to a SaaS supplier named InfoDynamics Webflow LLC. Do you remember that?" I tap the trackpad. "This invoice indicates that the payment came from a shell company. A blank little corporate face with no human name attached. But you just told me it was you. So now, I know one shell is yours."

I bring up the map. Lines begin spidering out across the screen, node after node lighting up in a violent, garish red.

"And once I know one is yours, I can match the fingerprints to all the others. Same registered agent. Same PO boxes. Same bank routing numbers. Same little tics in how the paperwork gets filed. One sweet gesture, Ronan. That's all it took. One nice thing you did to make me trust you, and it unzipped your whole hidden network. Dozens of them. All. Fucking. Yours."

A muscle thrums in his jaw. That's the only thing that changes.

"Third." I pull the filing. "Let's discuss the legal attack on my company. It scared me so bad I called you at the bar and begged for the second date early. You made me feel like Todd was going to take everything I built."

I trace the line with my finger, down through the shells, layer by layer.

"But the funny thing about that is, the source of the filing goes right back through your network to a sub-client of your own firm. Youwerethe attacker. You built the monster yourself, andthen you stood there in your rolled-up sleeves and offered to slay it for me."

"Kotyon—"

"You agreed you wouldn't say anything until I finished."

He closes his mouth.

"Four." I sound like a serial killer. So cold and unfeeling. "You told me the founder's shares clawback that 'Todd' was executing would be easily defeated. But that wasn't so true, was it?" I pull up the docket. "Because here's the court record. It shows that the motion waswithdrawn,not defeated. By consent, meaning both sides agreed to drop it. And then two days later, a second shell refiled almost the exact same thing."

I look up at him.

"So, to summarize, in case the details have slipped your memory: You invented a legal maneuver, scared me into granting you the power to fight back against it, then made a handshake deal with yourself to pull the paperwork… just so you could then do it all over again, without my knowledge this time. You're no savior, Ronan. Not one little bit."

His face doesn't move. But something behind his eyes churns and boils. I don't let myself look too long, for fear of what might happen if I do.

"Moving on. Number five." This is the one that turns my stomach every time I look at it, so I make myself say it slow. "The takeover paperwork, the documents that would strip my company out from under me… They have a creation timestamp."

I zoom in on it.

"And that timestamp proves they were drafted the morning after our second date. The dinner in the West Village. The night you told me, and I quote, 'Men like your husband don't quit. They lose, but then they regroup.'" I swallow down the bile in my throat. "You warned me about a man coming to take everything I built. And then you went home and, a few hours later, you started drafting the paperwork to do it yourself."

I straighten in the uncomfortable chair.

"That's premeditation, Mr. Akov. You planned it. Youknew."

The tension in the room is suffocating me. But I have to get through this. We're almost to the end.

"Six. When I first found it, I thought that maybe the funny business with Todd's account was a one-off thing. But this proves that's not the case at all. Because when I fired up an offline instance of my data engine, I pointed it at your firm's billing records—and I found the same pattern, over and over and over again. Dozens of times, across dozens of shell clients, you've shoved tens of millions of dollars through. You claimed you were doing legal work for these ghost clients of yours, but the payment timing that doesn't line up with a single verifiable court date. It's lies on lies."

I meet his eyes.

"That's why you took my company. Because my engine is the only thing on earth that could catch you. And you couldn't afford for it to be pointed in the wrong direction."

Now, I can see him breathing. It's labored, tortured. The knuckles on his right hand are bone-white.

"Maybe that's true," he rasps. "But it doesn't prove I had anything to do with any of it."