Chapter 4 - The Cloud and the Dirt
For three weeks, I played their game.
I stayed in the VIP rehabilitation wing. I let my mother come and brush my hair while she gave interviews to local magazines about the "tragic accident" that had befallen the Sterling family. I let Harold bring in his high-priced psychiatrists who asked me leading questions about my "depression."
I gave them nothing. I was docile. I was the tragic victim.
But underneath the covers, I was a general directing a war.
Using the burner phone Arthur gave me, I transferred two million dollars from a private offshore account Grandmother Rose had set up in my name—one that Tyler and Harold had no idea existed. I used it to hire the most ruthless forensic IT investigator on the East Coast, a woman named Sloane who specialized in digital reconstruction.
My physical therapy was brutal. Every day, I was strapped into a harness, forcing my deadened nerves to remember how to fire. I cried in pain. I bled. I threw up from the sheer exertion of trying to move a single toe. But every time I wanted to quit, I pictured Tyler’s flat, dead eyes as he shoved me off that balcony.
By week four, I could wiggle my toes. By week five, I could stand if I held onto parallel bars.
Meanwhile, Tyler was destroying the company. Arthur smuggled me financial reports. Tyler was liquidating Rose’s vintage diamond reserves, selling them off to foreign buyers at cut-rate prices to fund a massive, tacky expansion into mall retail. He was dismantling fifty years of legacy in a month.
One evening, my burner phone buzzed. It was Sloane.
"I got something," she said, her voice crackling with excitement. "Marcus wiped the local servers, sure. But he’s an amateur. He didn't realize that your grandmother had the security system hard-wired to a secondary cloud backup linked directly to the jewelry store's mainframe. It was on an automatic 24-hour delay sync."
My heart hammered against my ribs. "Do you have the footage?"
"I have it in 4K resolution, honey. Tyler’s hands on your shoulders. The push. His face. Everything. It’s a guaranteed felony conviction."
I closed my eyes, the sweetest wave of vindication washing over me. "Send it to Arthur. But don't give it to the police yet."
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"Why not?"
"Because arresting him isn't enough," I whispered into the dark room. "I want to take everything from them. Publicly."
