Chapter 5 - The Desperate Plea
"Mr. Sterling, please, you have to listen to reason," the defense attorney began rapidly, his voice pitching high with anxiety as he stared through the screen. "My client made a terrible mistake in the heat of the moment. Domestic stress, business pressures—it was a tragic accident, not a criminal act. If we can handle this privately outside of court—"
"Outside of court?" Alvin interrupted, his voice low and terrifyingly steady. "Your client attempted to cause hypothermic shock to a heavily pregnant woman—his own wife and the mother of his children—while coercing her to sign away her inheritance at gunpoint. There is nothing to discuss outside of a prison cell."
"Alvin!" Brenna’s voice broke through the speaker from the police cruiser, her face filling the right-hand panel of the screen. Gone was the cold, superior matriarch who had watched me shiver on the patio. She looked frantic, her makeup smeared with tears. "You can't let them ruin Diego! He's your son-in-law! If he goes to prison for felony coercion and attempted manslaughter, the scandal will destroy Apex Holdings, and our family name—"
"Our family name," Alvin repeated, a dark, humorless chuckle escaping his lips. "Brenna, the moment your son laid a hand on my daughter, your family name became a liability."
I shifted against the hospital pillows, pulling the blanket higher around my shoulders, and finally spoke up, my voice carrying clear and steady across the speaker.
"You can stop crying, Brenna," I said, looking straight into the camera lens at my mother-in-law. "Diego didn't just try to coerce me tonight. For six months, he and his business partners have been quietly draining the operational accounts of the subsidiary my father gifted us, funneling millions into shell companies. The financial audit was finished before dinner tonight."
Brenna froze, her mouth agape. The defense attorney stuttered, instantly losing his train of thought as he realized the scope of what we knew.
"You... you audited him?" Brenna whispered in horror.
"I was an analyst before I became a wife," I replied coldly. "Diego thought marrying me meant acquiring my father’s assets. He never realized I was keeping books on him the entire time."
Alvin reached out and tapped the screen, cutting the video feed with a sharp beep, plunging the tablet back into darkness. He turned back to me, a proud, fierce smile breaking across his face.
"That's my girl," Alvin murmured, sitting back down on the edge of the bed.
Before either of us could say another word, the maternity ward doors flew open without warning.
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A senior federal investigator strode into the room, holding a printed manifest with an official Department of Justice seal. His face was pale, his eyes wide with a mix of urgency and disbelief as he looked directly at my father.
"Mr. Sterling," the investigator said, breathless. "We just unlocked the encrypted server in Diego Morales's private office safe at the mountain retreat. You need to see what he downloaded ten minutes before we arrived."
