Iris pulled Judge Douglas’s public financial disclosures and set them beside the estate records of the Cole family shipping business.

What she found ran her blood cold.

Shortly after Gavin’s arrest, his younger brother, Jared Cole, had inherited ninety percent of their parents’ multi-million-dollar shipping empire. Within six months of taking control, Jared had routed more than four million dollars in “consulting fees” to a private offshore real-estate firm.

The primary beneficiary of that firm was Judge Preston Douglas.

“It wasn’t a trial,” Iris said to the empty room, tracing the flow of money on her legal pad. “It was a transaction.”

But there was a darker detail. Gavin’s wife, Nora Cole, had been a meticulous financial auditor for the family business. In the three weeks before her reported death, Nora had quietly flagged dozens of internal wire transfers and saved them to an encrypted external drive.