Chapter 3 - The Interception
At 11:00 PM, the house was dark. Marcus was fast asleep next to me, snoring softly. He had spent the evening drinking scotch, celebrating his supposed million-dollar theft.
I slipped out of bed, my bare feet making no sound on the hardwood floor. I checked the live feed from the hallway camera on my phone. Sylvia was awake. She was moving toward the kitchen.
I crept to the edge of the staircase and watched from the shadows. Sylvia opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of heavy prescription sedatives—pills prescribed to Marcus’s late father years ago. She crushed two of them into a fine powder, stirred them into a fresh glass of water, and walked quietly toward Eleanor’s room.
I waited until she went back to her own bedroom. Then, I moved.
I slipped into Eleanor’s room. She was wide awake, staring at the ceiling. I picked up the poisoned glass of water, poured it into a sterile plastic sample bottle I had brought from my travel kit, and sealed it tight. I replaced the water with fresh tap water.
“Did she bring it?” Eleanor whispered.
“Yes,” I said, tucking the evidence into my pocket. “This is the physical proof we need. Tomorrow morning, Victor is sending a private phlebotomist. We’re going to get a blood draw while Marcus is at the gym. We need medical evidence of the sedatives in your system.”
Eleanor gripped my hand. “They took my phone, Clara. They took my identification. They told the estate manager I was incapacitated.”
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“Victor is already filing the injunctions,” I promised her. “By tomorrow night, you will have everything back. And they will have nothing.”
I snuck back into the master bedroom. Marcus shifted in his sleep, his arm reaching out to drape over my waist. My skin crawled. I carefully moved his arm away, staring at the ceiling until the sun came up. I was compiling a mental list of every asset, every account, and every lie. I was a digital auditor. I didn't just find the missing numbers; I destroyed the people who took them.
