Chapter 8 - THE PEN AND THE POISON
“Who is your partner, Vanessa?” I demanded, gripping the armrests of the wheelchair.
Vanessa smiled, a cold, empty expression. “You met him. Briefly. Before he ran a red light in a delivery van.”
The room seemed to tilt. The screech of tires, the blinding headlights, the crushing impact that shattered my pelvis. It hadn't been an accident. My sister had ordered a hit on me.
Adrian instinctively stepped in front of my wheelchair. “You’re out of your mind, Vanessa. I’ve already pinged hospital security. They’re on their way.”
“Hospital security consists of two retired cops who take fifteen minutes to walk up a flight of stairs,” Vanessa scoffed. She casually leaned against the closed door, twirling the heavy gold pen in her fingers. “And by the time they get here, you will have signed the Northline transfer documents.”
“I’m never signing anything for you,” I spat. “You murdered my husband.”
Vanessa paused, the pen stopping in her hand. For a fraction of a second, genuine surprise flickered across her face.
“Murdered him?” she laughed softly. “Tessa, give me some credit. I don’t control cholesterol. Luke’s heart attack was perfectly natural. The timing, however, was highly inconvenient for me.”
“He was leveraging the house to pay you off,” Adrian interjected, his legal mind working furiously to keep her talking. “He found out you were using the empty office space to steal financial data.”
“He found out because he was too nosy for his own good,” Vanessa sneered. “He caught me handing off the Level 4 access badges to my partner in the parking garage. Luke threatened to go to the police. So, I showed him a little fabricated evidence proving that you, the brilliant CEO, were the one masterminding the data theft. I told him I’d take you down unless he paid my partner off.”
My chest ached, a profound, crushing sorrow for the man I had loved. Luke hadn't betrayed me. He had leveraged my parents' house, ruined his own credit, and bought a train ticket to Montreal to lure the criminals out of the country—all to protect me from being framed.
And his heart had given out under the stress before he could finish the job.
“So you staged the car crash to finish what Luke stopped,” I said, glaring at her.
“I staged the crash because you cut off the money, you idiot!” Vanessa yelled, her polished veneer finally cracking. “My partner was using your servers to launder money. When you froze the accounts and initiated an audit on the house, you locked him out! He needs the Northline holding trust transferred to his name to access the offshore accounts. Now, sign the paper!”
She pulled the stack of documents from her dark coat and threw them onto my lap.
“I told you,” I said, staring her dead in the eye. “I am not signing.”
Vanessa’s expression darkened. She raised the heavy gold pen, her thumb resting on the top clicker.
“You think this is just a pen, Tessa?” Vanessa whispered. “It’s a localized EMP jammer. My partner built it. The moment I click this, it fries every piece of electronic medical equipment in a fifty-foot radius.”
She pointed the pen directly at the wall separating this room from room 314.
“Your babies are in the next room,” Vanessa said coldly. “The pediatric wing relies on electronic oxygen regulators and localized climate monitors. If I click this, the life support systems for the entire floor shut down. Sign the paper, or I kill the power.”
Adrian lunged forward.
Vanessa clicked the pen.
Nothing happened.
The lights didn't flicker. The monitors in the hallway didn't stop humming.
Vanessa frowned, clicking the top of the gold pen again. And again. Panic finally bled into her eyes.
“It’s not an EMP jammer, Vanessa,” a new voice said.
The door to the hospital room was kicked open with such force it shattered the lock.
Standing in the hallway was my mother.
She was breathing heavily, her cashmere sweater wrinkled, her pearls askew. And standing behind her were three armed police officers.
May you like
My mother pointed a shaking finger at Vanessa.
“It’s a recording device,” my mother said, tears streaming down her face. “Luke gave it to me a week before he died. He told me to keep it safe. He told me it contained everything I needed to know about the monster I raised.”
