Chapter 9 - The Secret Evidence
Elena took a few shuddering breaths, finding comfort in my words. She reached over to the nightstand, picked up her phone, and opened a hidden, password-protected folder.
"I didn't just cry, Daniel," she said, a spark of fierce defiance returning to her eyes. "I knew something was wrong with the household accounts. So I started taking pictures when they weren't looking."
She handed me the phone. I swiped through dozens of high-resolution photographs. There were discarded bank invoices, sloppy transfer slips, and a printed legal document bearing a blatantly forged copy of my signature.
"My God," I murmured, analyzing the numbers.
My mother had aggressively used our household emergency reserve fund to cover a mountain of Lucas’s secret gambling debts. There were receipts for a failed underground nightclub he had tried to fund, purchases of five luxury watches, and the deed to a massive beachfront villa registered through the shell company 'Meridian Wellness.'
"The humiliation in the foyer today..." Elena hesitated, swallowing hard. "It wasn't random."
"What happened this morning?" I asked gently.
"I woke up early and saw a bank alert on the iPad in the kitchen. Another fifty thousand dollars was transferred out. I confronted your mother. I told her I was calling you in Singapore to tell you everything."
May you like
Elena wiped her eyes. "She snapped. She grabbed my phone and threw it against the wall. She dismissed the kitchen staff, forced me to my knees, and made Lucas record the punishment. They wanted to break me completely before you came home."
They had wanted to break the only witness. But they had chosen their target incredibly badly.
