Chapter 4: What Warren Found
Warren Holt arrived at the hospital the following morning carrying a leather briefcase and the expression of a man who had not slept.
Charles met him in a small family waiting room at the end of the corridor.
Warren set the briefcase on the table, clicked it open, and placed a thick folder between them.
"You asked for everything," Warren said.
"So I'm going to give you everything."
"Go ahead."
"The family's primary business — Aldren Group — is leveraged to approximately sixty-two percent of its total asset value.
They've been borrowing against the commercial properties to fund lifestyle expenses for at least four years." He tapped the folder.
"The Tampa estate alone has a second mortgage that Victoria doesn't appear to know about.
Gabriel took it out eighteen months ago."
Charles looked at the top page.
"What did he use the money for?"
"That's where it gets interesting." Warren opened to a tabbed section.
"There are transfers — regular, monthly — to a holding company registered in Delaware.
The holding company has one listed officer." He turned the page so Charles could read it.
"A woman named Serena Voss."
Charles said nothing.
"She's thirty-one.
Lives in Sarasota.
The transfers have been running for two years and total just over four hundred thousand dollars."
Charles set the page down.
"Does Chloe know?"
"I don't believe so."
"She doesn't need to know yet.
Not until we're in front of a judge." He closed the folder.
"What else?"
"The family has a relationship with a circuit court judge named Harlan Pruett.
Golf.
Dinners.
Two donations to his reelection campaign through a PAC connected to Aldren Group." Warren paused.
"I want to be careful about how I say this next part."
"Say it plainly."
"There is a pattern of cases in Pruett's court that have gone favorably for Aldren Group or its associates.
Nothing provable on its own.
But the pattern is there."
Charles leaned back in his chair.
"Then we make sure this case doesn't go anywhere near Pruett's court."
"Diana is already filing in a different division.
She anticipated this."
"Good." Charles stood and walked to the window.
The parking lot below was ordinary — cars, a woman pushing a stroller, a man eating lunch on a bench.
"Warren, how exposed are they if the Serena Voss transfers become public record?"
"Extremely.
If those transfers are characterized as marital asset dissipation — which Diana believes she can argue — Gabriel walks into the custody hearing already looking like a man who has been hiding money from his wife for two years while she was being treated for injuries in a hospital."
Charles turned from the window.
"Then we let the record speak."
Warren nodded slowly.
"There's one more thing." He reached into the briefcase and produced a single printed page.
"One of the puncture wounds on Chloe's arm.
The hospital ran a standard tox screen on admission."
Charles took the page.
He read it.
His hand stayed completely still.
"The medication Gabriel said he gave her," Warren said carefully.
"The dosage found in her system was not consistent with a prescribed amount.
It was consistent with something given to render a person unconscious."
The room was very quiet.
"He dr*gged her," Charles said.
"That is what the toxicology suggests.
Yes."
Charles set the page on the table.
He did not raise his voice.
He did not move quickly.
He simply looked at Warren with an expression that Warren would describe later, to his wife, as the calmest and most frightening thing he had ever seen on another person's face.
"Add it to the file," Charles said.
"Every page.
Every number.
Every transfer.
Every test result."
"Already done."
"And Warren — I want Gabriel served before the end of this week.
Divorce.
Custody.
And whatever Diana needs to file based on that tox report."
Warren picked up his briefcase.
"I'll have the papers ready by Thursday."
He left.
Charles sat back down at the table.
He picked up the toxicology page again and read it a second time, slowly, the way a man reads something he wants to remember exactly.
Then he folded it, placed it in his inside jacket pocket, and went back down the hall to his daughter's room.
Chloe was asleep.
Mason was sitting in the chair beside her bed, coloring in a book that one of the nurses had found for him.
He looked up when Charles came in.
"Grandpa.
Mom's sleeping again."
"I know, buddy." Charles sat on the edge of the bed.
"She needs rest."
Mason looked back at his coloring book.
He pressed the crayon down carefully, staying inside the lines.
"Is she going to be okay?"
"Yes," Charles said.
"She is."
Mason nodded, satisfied, and kept coloring.
May you like
Charles watched him and said nothing else.
But in his jacket pocket, the folded page felt like the first piece of something that was finally, after six years, about to be built.
