Chapter 9 - The Confession on Tape
Roderick raised his hands slowly, his face flushing a furious, mottled red as he glared at Marcus. “You have no right! This is private property! We’ll sue you into the ground—this is kidnapping, piracy—”
“Piracy?” Marcus cut him off with a harsh, barking laugh, pulling a compact digital recorder from his tactical vest and tossing it onto the white leather sofa between them. “You might want to check the playback on that little device before you start talking about legal rights, Counselor. It has every word of your charming little family planning session recorded in crystal-clear stereo.”
Lucas stared at the recorder, his eyes wide with sudden, absolute terror. All the arrogance, all the smug superiority of a man who thought he had outsmarted a billionaire family, dissolved into pathetic whimpering.
“Claire... please,” Lucas choked out, dropping to his knees on the shattered glass and liquor-stained carpet, reaching out a trembling hand toward me. “It was a mistake. They pressured me—my parents, they put me up to it, they said we needed the money for the corporate debts—”
“Don't you dare put this on us, you ungrateful coward!” Gertrude shrieked, lashing out and striking her son across the face with her handbag.
I looked down at the man I had married, feeling nothing—no anger, no betrayal, no lingering heartbreak. Just the cold, sterile pity one reserves for an insect caught under a microscope.
“You spent three months planning the murder of my entire family, Lucas,” I said quietly. “You thought you were marrying a helpless heiress who would hand over her father’s empire without a fight.”
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I turned to Marcus. “Secure them. The Mexican federal police are waiting at the dock in Ensenada with extradition warrants already signed by the Attorney General’s office.”
“At once, Commander,” Marcus said, nodding to the operators.
