Chapter 5 - The Voice on the Speakerphone
Detective Miller stopped, turning back as the nurse breathlessly approached him and handed over her personal mobile phone, playing a voicemail on speaker.
The tinny, amplified audio echoed down the quiet hallway, clear enough for every patient and nurse to hear.
“Daniel, it’s Richard from Vanguard Capital. We got your message about shifting the corporate liquidity into the private trust, but we have a massive problem. The federal tax liens from your mother’s estate were never cleared, and the primary account holder—your wife—just executed a full structural audit. Every single offshore asset you tried to hide under Jessica’s LLC has just been flagged for interstate fraud. If you don't fix this by noon, the feds are going to freeze your personal accounts too.”
The hallway went dead silent.
Inside his room, Daniel let out a strangled groan. Jessica, who had stepped out into the hallway to eavesdrop, turned completely pale, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
She whipped her head around, fixing her furious, tear-streaked glare entirely on me.
"You did this," Jessica hissed, taking a threatening step toward my doorway. "You planned this whole thing! You knew about the offshore accounts all along!"
I pushed myself up from my pillows, ignoring the sharp pain in my side, and looked her dead in the eye.
"Jessica," I said, my voice cutting through the corridor like a blade. "I didn't just give your boyfriend a kidney yesterday. I gave him enough rope to hang himself. And the best part is..."
I paused, offering a cold, razor-thin smile.
May you like
"...he signed every single document willingly."
Before Jessica could scream again, a burly security guard stepped out of the stairwell, flanked by two federal marshals holding a thick manila envelope bearing a federal seal.
