Chapter 13 - The Man Behind the Accounts
The investigation uncovered a second name.
Douglas Reed.
The Morgan family accountant.
He had attended the wedding.
He had also been the guest who refused to look at Taylor when Tabitha ordered her to serve the table.
Douglas had created shell companies, false invoices, and property loans.
For every dollar Tabitha stole, he kept twenty cents.
When officers arrived at his office, he was gone.
His computer had been wiped.
His accounts were empty.
But Taylor remembered something from the wedding photographs.
Douglas had left the ballroom carrying a silver briefcase.
The mansion security recording showed him entering the study shortly after Taylor went upstairs.
He stayed there for four minutes.
When he left, the briefcase was heavier.
The investigators searched airport records.
Douglas had booked a flight to the Cayman Islands for the morning after the family meeting.
Sarah shook her head.
“He’ll disappear.”
Taylor studied the timeline.
“No.”
She enlarged a photograph taken at the reception.
A luggage tag was visible on Douglas’s briefcase.
It showed the name of a private storage company outside Baltimore.
The police obtained a warrant.
Inside the unit, they found original trust documents, account ledgers, forged signatures, and twelve million dollars in negotiable bonds.
Douglas was arrested at the airport gate.
Faced with decades in prison, he agreed to testify against Tabitha.
He revealed that Tabitha had planned to transfer the mansion to a shell company after Colin’s wedding.
Taylor’s marriage had accelerated the plan.
Tabitha feared that a new spouse might examine the family finances.
That was why she tried to break Taylor immediately.
The humiliation had not been random cruelty.
It had been a warning.
Obey.
Stay silent.
May you like
Never look at the books.
👉 Taylor finally understood why Tabitha targeted her on the wedding night—and why Colin had been chosen long ago as the perfect scapegoat.
