Tabitha’s voice sharpened dramatically. “She is deliberately trying to ruin our relationship because she knows she cannot control you anymore.”
I reached into my wet pocket and placed the small digital recorder onto the marble table between us.
Tabitha stared down at the small black device. For the very first time that afternoon, she finally understood that the woman she had soaked was not a helpless servant, and she realized how terribly she had mistaken the situation.
I pressed the play button without saying another word.
Her recorded voice filled the entire foyer: People like you should be truly grateful that people like me even let you set foot indoors.
Then came the audio of her false accusation about the bracelet, her harsh command for me to scrub the floor on my knees, the heavy splash of water, and her loud laughter echoes right after.
Robin looked as if someone had physically struck him in the chest.
Tabitha suddenly lunged across the table for the recorder, but I quickly closed my hand over it before she could touch it.
“That audio recording is already backed up to a secure cloud server,” I told her calmly.
“So what?” she snapped, crossing her arms defensively. “Do you really think one bad afternoon cancels everything we built together, because Robin loves me and the wedding is in six days with everyone attending.”
“Not anymore,” Robin said firmly.
She spun around toward him with wide eyes. “You cannot possibly mean that, Robin.”
“I do mean it,” he answered without hesitation.
Real fear finally entered her eyes.
“Then you are going to regret this deeply,” she hissed, dropping her sweet act entirely. “I have already signed binding contracts in both of our names for the venue, the luxury designers, and the honeymoon villa, which totals nearly nine hundred thousand dollars, so if you cancel now, your family pays every penny.”
That single statement gave me the final confirmation I needed.
Tabitha had insisted that Robin authorize her to manage all wedding expenses through a dedicated account. He genuinely believed that the account contained only his personal funds, but it did not. My attorneys had funded it with a special traceable reserve after Teresa reported that Tabitha was pressuring local vendors to artificially inflate their invoices.
“Which specific contracts did you sign?” I asked her calmly.
“All of them,” she replied smugly.
“And what about the hidden kickback commissions?” I added.
Her eyes narrowed into tight slits.
I picked up my phone and called our general counsel, Simon Drake. He picked up immediately and I put him on speakerphone.
“Simon, we have full verbal confirmation,” I told him clearly.
“Understood, Mary,” Simon replied through the speaker. “The fraudulent payment requests have been completely frozen, and the investigators are waiting outside.”
Robin turned to look at me in confusion. “What do you mean by fraudulent?”
Simon continued explaining over the phone line. “Ms. Willis instructed three separate vendors to add false consulting fees that total two hundred forty thousand dollars, and those fees were routed directly to a shell company owned by her brother.”
Tabitha took a quick step backward toward the wall. “That is an absolute lie.”
I reached into my bag and placed a stack of bank records on the marble table. “Your brother’s agency was officially registered exactly eleven days after Robin proposed to you.”
Robin picked up the documents and suddenly seemed to age ten years as he read the numbers.
Tabitha forced tears to spill over her eyelashes.
“Robin, please listen to me,” she sobbed softly. “Your mother completely hates me, and she set this entire trap up to destroy us.”
“No, Tabitha,” he said quietly, looking up from the pages. “She gave you total privacy, and you freely showed her exactly who you are.”
Her fake tears stopped instantly.
