Chapter 9 - The Red Binder
Derek didn't hesitate. He marched straight to Filing Cabinet B, grabbed the handle of Drawer Three, and wrenched it open.
Inside, sitting right on top of a stack of tax forms, was a thick, red leather-bound binder.
He pulled it out and slammed it down onto the wooden table under the flickering fluorescent light. I pulled up a metal folding chair, dropped down onto it, and flipped the heavy cover open.
The pages within were a horrifying mosaic of banking statements, pharmacy prescriptions, and photocopied hospital reports dating back two years. But it was the handwritten annotations in my father’s red ink that made my stomach violently heave.
“March 14: Martha purchased fifty grams of digitalis extract through an online veterinary supplier using a false corporate front. Target dosage exceeds safe human limits by a factor of ten.”
“August 22: Added trace amounts to my evening tea. Heart rate plummeted to 42 bpm within two hours. She watched me from the kitchen doorway to see if I would collapse.”
“November 3: She asked me why my will still left the primary estate trust to Eleanor instead of splitting it equally with Brenda. When I told her the trust was locked, she smiled and said things can happen unexpectedly to people with weak hearts.”
I covered my mouth with both hands, hot tears finally breaking free and spilling down my cheeks. My father hadn't died of a natural pulmonary hemorrhage. He had been systematically poisoned in his own home by the woman he had spent forty years providing for, simply because he refused to let her hand his life's work over to my thieving sister.
And if I hadn't given birth early, if I hadn't stayed in that hospital bed while she tried to charge four luxury phones to my locked account, she would have finished the cycle with me.
"We need to go to the police right now," Derek said, his voice shaking with a cold, terrifying fury as he slammed the red binder shut. "This isn't just credit fraud anymore, El. This is premeditated murder."
"The local police won't touch this without an autopsy," I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, my voice turning hard and ice-cold as the grief crystallized into pure, unadulterated vengeance. "And Dad was cremated three days after he died, per my mother's explicit instructions."
Derek stared at me, his jaw clenching. "Then how do we stop her?"
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed loudly in my cardigan pocket, vibrating against the metal table.
I pulled it out. It was an incoming text message from an unknown, unlisted number.
I unlocked the screen and opened the message.
There was no text, just a single photograph taken through a window from the outside of our house across the street.
It showed Leah walking up our front steps holding a bundle wrapped in a pink blanket.
And directly beneath the photo was a text:
May you like
Nice baby. It would be a shame if something happened to her before her mother gets back from her little field trip.
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