Bruno was placed on immediate administrative leave, pending a federal corporate audit.
Panicking now, Indigo and Amber scrambled to sell the hidden luxury SUV and liquidate the oceanfront condo contract to raise emergency cash for bail.
But the District Attorney’s office moved faster, filing emergency motions to freeze every account linked to the fraudulent shell companies, and the assets locked shut before they could be moved.
And I watched, from the safety of my private room and my sealed files, as the family that had spent ten years wielding absolute power over my life discovered what it feels like to have power wielded over yours by an institution that cannot be screamed at, cornered, or intimidated into submission.
That afternoon, Bruno’s criminal defense attorney called mine with an offer, and it was the offer of a drowning man.
If I would drop the assault charges and waive my financial claims on the family home, his clients would agree to a swift, uncontested divorce.
My lawyer relayed it, and could not quite keep the dark amusement out of his voice.
“Jade,” he said, “they are offering to let you leave the marriage — in exchange for you saving them from prison.” “Tell them,” I said, “to go to hell.”
Chapter 13 — Amber’s Ledger
The preliminary audit revealed that over one point two million dollars had flowed through Bruno’s fraudulent vendor scheme across three years, most of it ending up in accounts managed directly by Indigo.
It was a substantial case already.
But the final, decisive piece of it was handed to the prosecutors by the last person any of us expected: Amber herself.
Amber requested a private meeting with prosecutors, desperate to cut a deal behind her own husband’s back.
And it was in that moment that I understood something true and clarifying about my in-laws: that the same family who had been so perfectly united, so vicious and coordinated, when the target was me, were in fact cowards who would turn on one another the instant real prison time entered the room.
Their loyalty to each other, which they had held up to me for a decade as sacred, evaporated the first moment it cost any of them something.
