Chapter 4 - The Paper Trail
With my badge suspended, I was legally locked out of the police database. But eight years on the force meant I had built a network of people who owed me their lives, their careers, and their secrets.
I sat at my kitchen island at 2:00 PM the next day, drinking black coffee. Across from me sat Marcus, a forensic accountant who worked for the District Attorney's white-collar crime division. I had pulled him out of a massive gambling debt three years ago without arresting him. Now, I was cashing in the favor.
I pushed a crumpled, blood-stained piece of paper across the granite counter.
When the EMTs had loaded Maya onto the stretcher, I had quietly slipped the document Vance had been trying to force her to sign into my tactical pocket.
Marcus adjusted his glasses and studied the legal jargon. As he read, his eyes widened in absolute shock.
“Lauren… where did you get this?”
“Vance was trying to force my sister to sign it while she was bleeding out on the floor. What is it?”
Marcus pulled out his laptop and started typing frantically. “This is a relinquishment of beneficiary rights. It transfers total control of a blind trust over to the spouse. I need to run the routing numbers at the bottom.”
For ten agonizing minutes, the only sound in the kitchen was the rapid clacking of Marcus’s keyboard.
“Got it,” he whispered, turning the laptop around so I could see the screen.
The numbers were staggering.
“Your father, before he died, patented a specific type of industrial polymer,” Marcus explained, pointing to the offshore accounts. “He put the patent rights into a blind trust for Maya, maturing on her thirtieth birthday. That’s next month, Lauren. The trust is currently valued at forty-two million dollars.”
I felt the air leave my lungs. “Maya had no idea. Our dad never mentioned it.”
“Vance knew,” Marcus said grimly. “I just pulled the public financial filings for Whitmore Real Estate. His company isn't booming, Lauren. It’s a house of cards. He over-leveraged massive commercial loans to build those luxury subdivisions. He’s underwater by thirty million. If the banks call his loans next quarter, he goes to federal prison for bank fraud.”
Everything suddenly clicked into a terrifying, crystal-clear picture.
Vance didn't just have a temper. He wasn't just an abuser. He was a desperate, drowning man. He needed Maya’s forty-two million dollars to cover his embezzlement and save his empire.
If Maya signed the papers, he got the money.
If Maya died in a "tragic accident" falling down the stairs, as her legal husband, he inherited the money.
May you like
The only thing standing in his way was me.
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