Chapter 3 - THE DEAD MAN'S LEGACYThe hospital room was dead silent, save for the rhythmic monitor beep that echoed like a ticking clock. Ethan felt his blood turn to ice.
"What are you saying, Ava?" Ethan asked, his knuckles white as he held her cold hand. "My father died of a heart attack twenty years ago. I was ten years old."
Ava reached into the pocket of her hospital gown and pulled out a small, tarnished silver USB drive—something Lena had managed to snatch from Margaret's desk amidst the chaos before the police arrived.
"Lena found this sewn into the lining of Margaret’s jewelry box," Ava said, passing it to Detective Reyes. "Plug it in, Detective. Please."
Reyes pulled out his department laptop, inserted the drive, and hit play on the single audio file titled 1998_Office_Rec.
A static hiss filled the room, followed by the deep, booming voice of Richard Vance—Ethan’s father.
"...you're insane, Margaret! It's embezzlement! You've laundered millions through offshore accounts in Panama, and now you want me to sign off on the fake audits? I won't do it. I'm going to the board tomorrow morning, and then I'm filing for divorce."
Then came Margaret's voice, young, shrill, and unhinged. "If you do that, Richard, you ruin everything! You ruin Ethan's future! I did this for our family!"
"You did this for your own greed!" Richard roared. "I'm taking Ethan and leaving. The police will sort this out."
The sound of glass shattering echoed through the speaker, followed by a heavy thud, a sharp gasp, and then... silence.
A third voice drifted through the recording—a voice Ethan recognized instantly as Dr. Harrison, the family physician who had declared his father dead of a sudden coronary arrest two decades ago.
"He's dead, Margaret. The blunt force trauma to his temple killed him instantly. We have to call the police."
"No," Margaret’s cold voice replied on the recording. "We call no one. You prepare a death certificate for a heart attack, Harrison. I will pay off your gambling debts by midnight, or I will ensure you spend the rest of your life in a state penitentiary alongside me. Choose now."
The recording ended with a sickening click.
Ethan sank to his knees beside Ava’s hospital bed, his head striking the mattress as a guttural sound of pure anguish escaped his throat. His entire life—his memories of his father, his perception of his loving mother, his very existence—was built on a foundation of murder, deceit, and blood.
"My whole life..." Ethan wept, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably. "She killed my father. She killed your father. She crippled you... and I let her live under our roof. I let her control us!"
Ava placed her trembling hand on Ethan’s hair, tears overflowing her own eyes. "Ethan, look at me. Look at me!"
He forced himself to raise his head.
"You didn't know," Ava said fiercely, her voice filled with a mixture of immense pain and fierce protectiveness. "She fed you the same lies she fed the world. She poisoned your mind just like she poisoned my body. But it stops today."
Detective Reyes closed his laptop with a sharp snap. "This recording gives us probable cause to reopen Richard Vance's death investigation and upgrade Margaret Vance’s charges to Premeditated Capital Murder in the First Degree. She will never see the light of day again."
Just then, Reyes’s phone rang. He stepped aside to answer it. As he listened to the voice on the other end, his expression turned grim, his jaw tightening into a hard line.
He hung up and turned back to Ethan and Ava, his eyes dark with bad news.
"What happened?" Ethan demanded, pushing himself up from the floor. "Did she post bail?"
"No," Reyes said quietly. "Margaret Vance didn't make it to the holding cell. The transport vehicle carrying her to the county jail was broadsided by an unmarked semi-truck three blocks from the precinct."
Ava gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
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"Is she dead?" Ethan asked, his chest heaving.
"No," Reyes replied. "The truck driver fled the scene. But when officers opened the back of the transport van... Margaret Vance was gone. Someone ambushed the transport, Ethan. She didn't act alone. Your mother has an accomplice, and right now, they are on the loose."
