Chapter 3: The Digital Noose
While the paramedics were rushing Clara into the ambulance, Elias kept his family pinned in the living room. They were terrified to move. They knew he had been trained in intelligence, that he knew how to find what was hidden.
"You think you’re wealthy?" Elias walked toward his father’s study. "You’re bankrupt. You’ve been bleeding the family trust dry for years. Clara found the discrepancies, didn't she? She was going to tell the SEC."
"You have no proof," Richard snapped, regaining a shred of his arrogance.
Elias didn't answer. He sat at his father’s desk and opened the encrypted laptop that sat there—the one he’d seen his father obsess over in every video call for the last six months. He had watched them interact, noticed the patterns, and studied their digital habits even from thousands of miles away.
He didn't need to hack it. He knew his father’s password; it had been the same since 2005.
The screen illuminated his face. He began reading aloud the emails, the wire transfers to shell companies, the falsified medical records they had used to frame Clara for "erratic behavior" to justify keeping her under "guard."
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"You didn't just try to kill her," Elias whispered, the coldness in his heart expanding to fill the room. "You tried to erase her."
He looked up. The siren of the police cruiser pulled into the driveway, lights flashing against the walls. He had sent the files to the authorities an hour ago, while Clara was still in his arms, waiting for the help he knew he had to guarantee.
