Part 3: The Asset Injunction
By 9:00 a.m. the following morning, the central administrative suite at Hale Capital was placed under a total freeze.
I didn't file a simple police report; I entered the boardroom alongside Marcus Bell, our senior compliance attorney.
Arthur Hale sat at the head of the mahogany table, his silver hair immaculate, his posture radiating old-money arrogance.
Helen sat right beside him, her fingers casually playing with her multi-layered pearl necklace as she smiled at us.
"Patrick, Clara, what a surprise," Helen said smoothly, her voice dripping with artificial warmth. "Did Isabella like her toy?"
"The toy is currently sitting in a federal evidence locker, Helen," I stated, my voice dropping like a heavy iron ax.
Marcus Bell stepped forward, sliding a certified copy of an emergency corporate receivership order onto the glass.
The grand digital projection monitors along the boardroom wall shifted instantly, displaying the unredacted network tracking logs.
The screens illuminated forty pages of data packets tracking the teddy bear’s live stream directly to Arthur’s terminal.
"This is an absolute abuse of legal process!" Arthur shouted, standing up so fast his leather chair rattled.
"You cannot freeze my firm’s operating proxies over a harmless family dispute regarding a child's birthday gift!"
"It ceased being a family dispute when you used corporate funds to finance illegal electronic surveillance," Marcus countered.
The metadata proved that the encrypted cellular sim card inside the bear was registered to Hale Capital’s utility pool.
They had used corporate capital to fund a cyber-espionage device targeting a minor inside a private residence.
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"The state attorney general has initialized a total block on your entire commercial investment registry," I said.
"Your names are being permanently expunged from the regional philanthropic indices before the market can settle tonight."
