All Chapters of Making My Ex-Husband Crawl: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

80 Chapters

71| THE NAME HE SAID

Valerie's PovWe found a quiet room off the main corridor.Two chairs and a table and a window onto a side courtyard. The kind of room that existed in courthouses because people needed somewhere to sit between things.Marcus was on the phone outside. Our legal team was with the DA's office. Dante and I were inside with the door half closed and the low hum of the building around us."Webb," I said."Yes," Dante said."He was there," I said. "He drove Cassian to the car. He stood in a car park and watched a man cut the brake line of a vehicle. And then seven years later he sat across a table from me in a hotel room and told me Cassian was planning a kidnapping.""Yes," Dante said."He was doing it to protect himself," I said. "Because Cassian had found out he had been talking to people on our side. He came to us to get ahead of being named.""That is the read," Dante said."But his information was accurate," I said. "The Ferris contact. The surveillance. The kidnapping plan. All of it w

72| THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT TALK

Dante's PovThe witness's name was Gordon Hale.I pulled everything we had on him in forty minutes. Former early-stage investor in Thorne Industries.In at the ground level when the company was still called Thorne Capital Group and had three employees and an office the size of a large cupboard. He had put in four hundred thousand at the start and taken out significantly more when Cassian bought him out five years later.He had stayed quiet since. No public profile. No board positions. A property management business in the southern suburbs that was small and clean and not connected to anything that touched Cassian's later operations."He is not a criminal," I said.Valerie was across the table from me. We were in her office, documents spread between us, the hearing suspended for the day."No," she said. "He is someone who made money from a man he knew was doing something wrong and looked the other way.""And now that man is naming people in open court," I said. "And Hale has decided th

73| THE VIDEO CALL

Valerie's PovThe call was set up through the court's video link system.Not our preference. Hale's lawyer had insisted on the format as a condition of any engagement at all. Just a voluntary conversation over a secure court-approved channel, with both legal teams present on their respective ends.It was not ideal. It was what we had.Dante sat beside me at the conference table. Marcus was behind us. Our lawyer was on the other side of the room.The screen came on. Hale appeared. He was older than his file photograph. He had the particular quality of someone who had been sleeping badly and was not going to tell you that."Mr Hale," I said. "Thank you for agreeing to speak.""My lawyer said I should," he said. "I am not sure it is the right decision.""You can end the call at any time," I said.He looked at me through the screen. "You are the woman from the papers," he said."Yes," I said."Cassian talked about you," he said. "Early on. When he was first putting the company together.

74| THE MOTION

Dante's PovWe got back to the apartment and she sat at the kitchen table and I put coffee on and sat across from her and waited."He has been in custody for weeks," she said."Yes," I said."He confessed in open court," she said. "To embezzlement. To the accident. On record voluntarily.""Yes," I said."And he files for a mistrial," she said. "On the basis of new evidence that nobody has seen yet and that nobody can assess until a hearing that is at minimum forty-eight hours away.""Yes," I said."The system allows that," she said."Yes," I said. "It does."She looked at the table. "I know it allows it. I know why it allows it. Due process exists because the alternative is worse. I know all of that." She paused. "I am still angry about it.""That is allowed," I said."I know it is allowed," she said. "I am naming it because if I do not name it I sit here looking like I am fine and I am not fine right now.""Tell me what not fine looks like tonight," I said.She looked up. "Tired," sh

75| WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWS

Valerie's PovThe forensic consultant's report came through at eleven in the morning.Forty-two pages. I read every one of them. Dante read them beside me without being asked, which was the way things worked between us now.The chain of custody was clean. Every transfer documented. Every signature present. Every timestamp consistent with the sequence of handling.The consultant had gone back to the original investigation archive and traced the tire samples from their initial collection point forward through every stage to the recent lab analysis.No gaps. No anomalies. No indication of interference."It is clean," I said when I finished."Yes," Dante said. He had finished a few minutes before me."Cassian's team is going to challenge it anyway," I said."They have already challenged it," he said. "The planted claim is filed, but the documentation responds to that claim directly. The court will see both.""And decide," I said."Yes," he said. "And the documentation is very strong."I p

76| THE NOTE

Dante's Pov"The full truth will destroy everything you think you know," she said. "That is the line.""Yes," I said."What does that mean?" she said."It means one of two things," I said. "Either he has something real that genuinely changes the picture. Or he is using the language of something real to get you in a room one more time.""The second option is more likely," she said."Yes," I said. "Statistically. Given his history.""But the first option is possible," she said."Yes," I said. "It is possible."She put the note down on the table. The photograph Marcus had taken of it. The handwriting she had known for years still recognisable even in a photograph of a photograph."He said what I told you in the visitation room was not everything," she said. "He told me he changed the tires himself. He said he needed me to need him. He named Webb.""He named Webb as being present," I said. "But he also said someone helped him. The person who was present and the person who did the work mig

77| THE LAST ROOM

Valerie's POVThe supervised visit room was smaller than the glass room.One table. Two chairs on opposite sides. A guard stationed at the door with the door open. A camera in the upper corner of the wall. Everything recorded, everything visible, nothing hidden.I sat down first.He was brought in two minutes later. He had lost more weight since the open court session. His clothes were the facility's.His hands were folded in front of him when he sat down and he did not immediately speak.I waited."Thank you for coming," he said."I am here because the court ordered the visit," I said. "Say what you have to say."He looked at his hands. "I know why you are here," he said. "I am still grateful.""Cassian," I said. "The note said the full truth. So say it."He looked up at me. "I need you to understand that I did not know the full extent of it until much later," he said. "What I arranged was the accident. The tires, the brake line. That was mine. I have told you that.""Yes," I said."

78| ON THE DRIVE BACK

Dante's POVShe was quiet for the first five minutes of the drive.Not the processing quiet. The sitting-with-it quiet. The kind that meant she had taken in more than she could immediately sort and was letting it settle before she touched it.I drove and let her have it."He was not the beginning," she said finally."No," I said."He was the instrument," she said. "Someone pointed him at my father and he went.""That is what he says," I said."Do you believe it?" she said.I thought about it honestly. "I believe it is possible," I said. "Cassian is capable of planning things himself. He proved that for years. But the specific targeting of your father. The timing. The knowledge of what your father was building legally. That level of information about a private individual's legal activities." I paused."That takes access Cassian may not have had on his own.""Someone with access to the estate management structure," she said."Or access to your father's legal communications," I said. "Hi

79| SOMEONE BIGGER

Valerie's POVWe did not go inside immediately.We sat in the parked car outside the building, the city went on around us and neither of us reached for the door."He said someone pointed him at your father," Dante said. "Someone with an interest in the estate.""Yes," I said."Is he telling the truth?" he said. "Your honest read."I had been asking myself the same question since I walked out of the supervised room. "He has told me things that turned out to be true," I said. "The gate confession. The visitation room. The open court testimony about the tires. Every time he said something I could not verify immediately, the verification eventually came.""So his track record supports it," Dante said."His track record on the things he eventually confessed to supports it," I said. "But he also has a track record of saying things specifically designed to keep me coming back. The full truth, one more meeting. There is always one more thing.""Both can be true," Dante said."Both are probabl

80| PROJECT WHEELCHAIR

Dante's POVThe file came through at seven in the evening.I had it on the laptop on the kitchen table. Valerie sat beside me and we read it together. Neither of us spoke for the first twelve minutes.Her father had been meticulous.Dates. Names. Transfer records going back twenty-two years. The documentation of money leaving the St Claire estate through management fees that were too large.Investment decisions that moved funds into entities that should not have had access to them, and a paper trail that was layered and careful and had been built specifically to be difficult to follow.But he had followed it."He was thorough," I said."I told you," she said. "He read the full manual.""This took years," I said. "This is not something you build in months. He was watching this for a long time before he started documenting.""He knew something was wrong," she said. "He just needed to be able to prove it."I scrolled further. The middle section was the case file itself. The sequence of t

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