Chapter 4 - PHASE TWO
The reception still happened.
That surprised everyone, including Marina.
By five o’clock, the estate ballroom glowed beneath chandeliers. Jazz moved softly through the room. Guests who had spent the afternoon pretending not to notice police cars now pretended not to know exactly why Galina’s chair remained empty.
Marina danced with Andrey.
She cut a cake.
She hugged relatives.
She smiled for photographs.
And every few minutes, she remembered her mother’s dress lying in red water.
Joy and grief occupied the same body more easily than she expected.
Near sunset, Marina slipped away to a quiet terrace.
Andrey followed.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
They stood beside the stone railing.
Beyond the lawn, police had finally left.
Andrey looked at his wedding ring.
“I always thought my mother was controlling.”
Marina waited.
“I thought it came from fear. She grew up poor. Dad built everything. She became obsessed with keeping it.”
“That may still be part of it.”
“She destroyed your mother’s dress.”
“Yes.”
“You are being very calm about that.”
“I am trying not to make decisions from the worst hour of my life.”
Andrey looked at her.
“That is why I love you.”
Marina smiled sadly.
“That and my rice.”
“Your rice is average.”
She elbowed him.
For ten seconds, they were newlyweds.
Then Andrey’s phone rang.
Detective Kim.
The second phone contained dozens of encrypted messages.
Investigators had identified “S” as Samuel Drazin, the attorney named in the altered trust.
More importantly, they found a document attachment labeled PHASE TWO.
It was not a business plan.
It was a legal petition.
Andrey read the title on Marina’s phone.
PETITION FOR TEMPORARY FINANCIAL CONSERVATORSHIP.
His face went blank.
“What does that mean?”
Marina already understood.
“They planned to argue you were not competent to manage the company.”
“What?”
The petition cited Andrey’s supposed “emotional instability,” “reckless spending,” and “susceptibility to manipulation by his fiancée.”
Marina read the words twice.
“They were going to blame me.”
Andrey scrolled.
Attached were draft affidavits from two employees.
One psychiatrist.
And Samuel Drazin.
“If I signed the trust amendment first,” Andrey said slowly, “then they could challenge me?”
Marina nodded.
“Potentially. Once the voting shares moved into the continuity committee, a petition against your competency could keep control there.”
He stared at the city lights beyond the estate.
“They were going to take the company.”
“Looks that way.”
“From my father.”
“And you.”
“And use you as the reason.”
“Yes.”
He laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes disbelief has nowhere else to go.
Then Marina noticed a line inside the petition.
“Wait.”
Attached as evidence was a copy of their prenuptial agreement.
She frowned.
Only four people should have had copies.
Marina.
Andrey.
Their independent attorneys.
And one sealed archival copy.
Yet the petition quoted a private clause regarding inheritance rights.
“How did they get this?”
Andrey looked at her.
“My mother chose the lawyer who drafted the first version.”
“But we rejected that version.”
Marina opened her own stored copy.
Their signed prenup had been prepared by separate counsel after Marina insisted on independent representation.
She compared the quoted language.
It was not from the final agreement.
It came from the first draft.
The one Galina arranged.
Andrey sat down.
“This is bigger than I thought.”
Marina returned to the ballroom long enough to tell Tatyana they were leaving early.
“On your wedding night?”
“Yes.”
“That is the saddest sentence I have ever heard.”
“We need Viktor.”
Viktor had returned home with his nurse after the ceremony.
When Marina and Andrey arrived at the Gorin mansion, the house was dark except for the library.
Viktor sat there waiting.
His nurse, Ana, placed tea beside him.
Andrey handed over the conservatorship petition.
Viktor read slowly.
His hands began to tremble.
“Drazin.”
“You trusted him?” Marina asked.
“For twenty years.”
Viktor looked at Andrey.
“He wrote old trust.”
Andrey’s face tightened.
“So he knew every weakness.”
“Yes.”
Marina asked, “Did he control any company accounts?”
“Escrow. Property closing. Some foreign deals.”
Marina’s mind sharpened.
Foreign deals.
She had noticed transfers routed through a Luxembourg entity.
“Viktor, did the company have an account called Gorin Baltic Holdings?”
His eyes narrowed.
“No.”
Marina opened her laptop.
A transfer history showed $3.8 million moved over fourteen months.
Viktor stared.
“That is not ours.”
Andrey whispered, “Then whose is it?”
Marina searched the beneficiary information she had obtained during her internal review.
The registered contact matched Samuel Drazin’s law office.
Viktor closed his eyes.
“Samuel.”
The betrayal landed differently for him.
Galina was his wife.
Samuel had been his counsel.
Two people closest to the company had apparently used his illness as an opportunity.
Ana touched Viktor’s shoulder.
His blood pressure monitor began beeping.
Andrey stood.
“Dad.”
“I am fine.”
“You are not.”
Viktor looked at Marina.
“Find everything.”
She hesitated.
“This is your company.”
“You are auditor.”
“I’m your daughter-in-law.”
“Today both.”
That night, Marina and Andrey slept for three hours in separate rooms of the Gorin mansion because neither could rest.
At 3:40 a.m., Marina woke to her phone vibrating.
An email.
No sender name.
Subject:
YOU MISSED ONE ACCOUNT.
Inside was a spreadsheet.
She opened it.
More transfers.
Much larger.
$19.2 million over six years.
Payments to shell companies.
Consulting fees.
Property acquisitions.
And one recurring transfer every quarter into a trust Marina had never seen.
BENEFICIARY: A. GORIN.
Andrey.
Her husband.
Marina stopped breathing.
If the documents were real, millions had been moved in Andrey’s name.
Money he claimed not to know existed.
At the bottom of the email was one sentence.
ASK YOUR HUSBAND WHAT HE SIGNED IN 2022.
Marina looked toward the guest room where Andrey slept.
For the first time since the wedding began, suspicion entered their marriage.
Before Marina closed the laptop, she copied the anonymous email to an encrypted folder and printed the transfer list. She had learned one thing from the wedding already: when powerful people depended on confusion, documentation became a form of self-defense. Whatever came next, no one would be able to claim she had imagined the numbers, misunderstood the papers, or invented the warning after the fact.
May you like
Keep reading in Chapter 5, because Andrey’s 2022 signature linked him directly to the missing millions—and Marina had to decide whether her new husband was another victim or part of the scheme.
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