Chapter 8: The Interview Request
On the seventh day, Adrian’s counsel requested a formal interview under the preservation order.
Vivian and the investigators prepared the parameters. I was not required to attend, and I did not. The interview belonged to the document trail, not to any remaining personal narrative between us.
Vivian briefed me afterward in the same undecorated hotel room.
“He denied knowledge of the forged guarantees,” she said. “Claimed certain signature authorities had been delegated during a busy period and that internal controls had failed. When they turned to the origin-of-funds material, he became less expansive. His counsel interrupted more frequently. They are trying to wall off the founding capital story as a historical issue outside the current operating review.”
“It’s not outside it.”
“No. And the creditors’ counsel will not treat it as historical. They’re already preparing timelines that start seven years ago.”
I stood and walked to the window. The bruises along my arms had shifted in color, the deeper ones still visible under the hotel light. I no longer photographed them daily. The medical record was complete. The public record was becoming complete as well.
“Any contact from Celeste?”
May you like
“Only through the segregation filing. No personal approaches.”
That, too, was information. The family unit that had once presented itself as seamless was now operating on separate tracks, each calculating survival odds.
