Chapter 3 - The Paper Trail
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A nurse entered ten minutes later. She carried a tray of fresh IV fluids, her rubber shoes squeaking quietly on the polished floor. When she looked toward the bed and saw me staring at her with one open eye, she nearly dropped her plastic clipboard.
"Oh! Ms. Carter!" she gasped, rushing forward. "You're awake! Let me call the doctor—"
"Please," I rasped. My voice sounded shredded, raw from the screams I had uttered on the Soho sidewalk. "Please don't tell anyone I'm awake."
She froze, staring at me in confusion. "Ms. Carter, your fiancé is outside talking to the medical chief—"
"I need my phone," I interrupted, my hand reaching out to grab her wrist with every ounce of strength I had left.
"Your personal belongings were taken by the police into evidence," she explained softly, her eyes filled with pity. "They're investigating the assault."
"Then bring me a hospital tablet," I begged, my throat burning. "Please. Just for five minutes. Don't log it into the system."
The nurse hesitated, looking back at the frosted glass window of my door. Seeing the genuine terror and determination in my eyes, she nodded slowly. She stepped into the hallway and returned a minute later with a black clinical tablet.
My fingers trembled violently as I opened a private browser tab. I logged into an old, encrypted cloud server that Logan had set up years ago for our shared household documents—an account he had long forgotten I still had access to.
I scrolled past folders containing utility bills, lease agreements, and travel itineraries until my eyes locked onto a single, red-tagged file directory:
MAYA — ORIGINAL AGREEMENT.
I opened it.
Inside were hundreds of scanned PDFs, emails, photographs, and bank transfers dating back six years.
Rachel Mercer’s name was everywhere.
She wasn't just Logan's secret lover. She was the daughter of Victor Mercer, the billionaire founder of Mercer Records. The emails revealed everything: a five-year non-disclosure agreement, a monthly stipend paid to my former talent agency to keep me ignorant, and psychological profiles detailing how to keep me dependent on Logan.
Then I found the final document, uploaded just three months ago.
A term life-insurance policy worth twenty million dollars.
The primary beneficiary was Logan Vance. The policy covered accidental death and permanent disfigurement.
May you like
At the bottom of the page was my signature.
Except I had never seen this document in my life. The signature was a forged replica of my handwriting.
