Chapter 6 - THE FORGOTTEN BRIDESMy heart stopped. "What... what did you say?"
"Eight years ago, Graham was married to a woman named Clara Reynolds," Captain Vance explained, scrolling through the files. "She reportedly died of a sudden cardiac arrest at age twenty-seven. Four years ago, he married Sarah Lin. She died of an apparent accidental fall down a cliff side while on vacation."
I couldn't breathe. The oxygen mask felt like it was suffocating me.
"Both women," Captain Vance continued, "had signed identical trust agreements prior to their deaths. Both women had high traces of heavy metals found in their systemic tests during autopsy—tests that were suppressed by Dr. Mercer, who was the attending physician in both cases."
The entire horror of the picture finally came into absolute, terrifying focus.
It wasn't just Judith.
It wasn't just Dr. Mercer.
It was a systematic, corporate murder machine. Judith provided the wealth and legal protection. Mercer provided the medical cover-ups and poison formulations. Sterling handled the legal offshore routing.
And Graham...
Graham was the bait.
He found young, vulnerable women with no powerful family connections—women like me, who had lost their parents early and had no one to ask questions when things went wrong. He married us, brought us into the estate, and stood by while his mother slowly poisoned us to collect payouts from shell trusts set up in our names.
"Where is Graham?" I demanded, pushing the oxygen mask off my face, struggling to sit up despite the brutal pain in my ribcage. "Where is he right now?"
"He's in the ICU on the third floor," Captain Vance replied. "Under armed guard. But Mrs. Vance, you need to stay in this bed. You have severe internal bleeding and heavy metal toxicity."
"No," I said, my voice hardening into something cold and unyielding. "You don't understand. If Graham wakes up before you seize those accounts, he has the secondary passcodes. Mercer said he had the drive, but the drive is useless without the biometric key."
Captain Vance frowned. "What biometric key?"
I raised my right hand—the hand Graham had held tightly at the ER registration desk while pretending to comfort me.
When he squeezed my hand at the desk, he hadn't been offering comfort. He had been using a small, micro-needle transfer device to imprint a subcutaneous micro-chip beneath the skin of my wrist.
May you like
I looked down at my right wrist. Beneath the skin, a tiny, dark blue raised bump was visible.
Graham hadn't been trying to save me in the ER. He was trying to make sure I stayed alive just long enough to pass through a scanner.
