Chapter 18 - The Digital Ghost HuntI didn't panic this time. I didn't call the police immediately. I remembered my father’s primary rule: Never fight an enemy in the dark until you know where their power source is.
Within an hour, Detective Vance was sitting at my kitchen island, listening to the intercepted Zurich audio file on loop while Maya slept soundly upstairs.
"She’s using a contraband burner smartphone smuggled through a corrupt prison guard," Vance said, his jaw clenching tightly as he ran a trace on the IP routing logs. "And she’s coordinating with an offshore corporate lawyer who specializes in defunct estate liquidations."
"How is that even possible?" I asked, gripping my coffee mug so hard my knuckles turned white. "She’s serving life without parole!"
"White-collar criminals with hidden offshore capital have ways of buying influence, even behind bars," Vance explained grimly. "If her legal team files a motion to vacate the original property forfeiture based on a technicality in the 1989 municipal bankruptcy act, they could legally challenge your ownership of this house all over again."
"Not if we cut off her funding source first," I said, my voice hardening into steel.
Vance looked up, surprised by the fierce determination in my eyes. "What do you have in mind?"
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"Wendy thinks she’s the only one who knows about the offshore accounts," I said, pulling up a secondary encrypted folder from my father's local server. "Before my father passed away, he didn't just build a security system for this house. He spent two years tracking every single shell company Wendy and Arthur Sr. created back in the eighties."
Vance leaned in closer. "Show me."
