Chapter 4
The paramedic gently cut away Sarah’s silk pant leg, exposing the gruesome, purple swelling around her deformed right shin. As the cold air hit the exposed injury, Sarah groaned, burying her face into her trembling arm.
“Hold still, Sarah,” Dr. Hayes murmured, swabbing the back of her hand with alcohol before sliding an IV catheter into her vein. “You’ll feel a sharp pinch, and then the pain will start to fade.”
Within seconds, the rushing warmth of the morphine flooded Sarah’s bloodstream, dulling the razor-sharp edges of the agony into a heavy, distant thrum.
David stood paralyzed in the center of the kitchen, his gaze darting wildly between the paramedics working on his wife and the formidable man standing over him.
“You set me up,” David whispered, the realization finally dawning on him. “This whole night... the argument... you planned this.”
“I didn't plan for you to break her leg, you coward,” Arthur said, his voice flat and merciless. “I hoped, for Emma’s sake, that you would show even a shred of human decency. But Sarah knew better. She understood exactly what kind of monster you were.”
David whipped his head toward Sarah, his eyes wild. “The four fingers! That’s what you signaled to Emma! What was the code, Sarah? What did you tell our daughter to do?!”
Sarah exhaled a long, shuddering breath as the sedative took effect, her gaze never wavering from David’s face. “Four fingers meant Protocol Four, David. It meant that you had crossed the final line. It meant Emma was supposed to hit the red button and run.”
“You trained a four-year-old to spy on me in my own home?!” David yelled, looking around the room in frantic disbelief. “Do you hear how insane that sounds?! She’s turning my own child against me!”
“You turned her against you the first time you shoved Sarah against the dining table three months ago,” Arthur replied. “Emma saw it, David. A child remembers who makes her mother cry.”
Margaret, finding her voice again, stepped forward with venom dripping from every syllable. “This is ridiculous! David, call the police right now! Call the local precinct! Chief Miller is on the country club board with you! He will have these trespassers thrown in jail before midnight!”
Arthur turned his head slightly toward Margaret, an eyebrow raised in amusement. “By all means, David. Call Chief Miller. Use your phone.”
David hesitated, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “What did you do to Miller?”
“Chief Miller was relieved of his duties at approximately six o’clock this evening by the state attorney general’s task force,” Arthur stated calmly. “It turns out the five hundred thousand dollars in ‘consulting fees’ your firm paid to his private offshore LLC constituted federal bribery and racketeering. He is currently sitting in an interrogation room in the federal building downtown.”
David’s knees visibly buckled. He reached out, steadying himself against the edge of the kitchen island where Sarah had struck her back only minutes earlier. “No... that’s impossible. That was a blind trust! There’s no paper trail connecting me to that account!”
“There wasn't,” Arthur agreed. “Until forty-five minutes ago, when Sarah downloaded your encrypted financial keystrokes from your laptop while you were in the shower.”
David looked down at Sarah on the floor, horror and betrayal contorting his features. “You... you stole my encrypted drive?”
“I didn't steal it, David,” Sarah said, her voice stronger now as the pain medicine took hold. “I reclaimed what you stole from my family’s estate. You thought I was your quiet, submissive little wife who didn't understand your spreadsheets. Did you forget I graduated top of my class in forensic accounting before I gave up my career to raise Emma?”
“You deceitful little...” David began, lunging forward with bared teeth.
May you like
Before David could close the distance, Arthur’s hand shot out like an iron clamp, catching David by the throat and slamming him backward against the stainless-steel refrigerator. The heavy metal rattled violently, the sound echoing through the expansive home.
“Touch her again,” Arthur whispered, his fingers tightening until David’s face turned bright red, “and they will be carrying you out of here in a body bag.”
