Chapter 10 - The Price of Blood
Digital footprints were damning, but the district attorney needed a solid motive to take on a billionaire with a team of ruthless defense lawyers. We found it hidden in a web of offshore accounts.
My forensic accountant, a brilliant woman named Sarah, requested a secure video call. When her face appeared on my screen, she looked physically ill.
"I found the money," Sarah said, her voice tight. "And it's worse than we thought."
She shared a series of encrypted documents. Daniel had secretly taken out a massive, twenty-million-dollar life insurance policy on Emma and Ethan. He had forged my signature on the consent forms over a year ago. But the truly sickening part was the beneficiary. The money wasn't slated to go directly to Daniel. It was assigned to a newly formed, anonymous shell company registered in the Cayman Islands.
"I tracked the shell company's registered agent," Sarah explained, highlighting a name on the screen. "It's controlled entirely by Vanessa’s younger brother, Thomas. And there's more. Two days after the deaths—the morning of the autopsy—Daniel authorized a wire transfer of five hundred thousand dollars from the corporate accounts to Thomas. He marked it as a 'specialized consulting fee'."
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I stared at the numbers on the screen. Twenty million dollars. That was the price Daniel had placed on the lives of our children. He had suffocated them to inject cash into his failing side-ventures and to start a new, insanely wealthy life with his mistress, completely bypassing the messy financial split of a divorce.
The sheer, calculated greed of it took my breath away. It wasn't a crime of passion. It was a business transaction.
