Chapter 3: The Masterpiece of a Prodigy
Arthur’s breath hitched. "Evelyn... what are you doing? Shut that off!"
"Why should she?" Leo asked softly, walking over to his mother's side.
The old man looked between his daughter-in-law and his grandson. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces clicked together in his mind, and a chill went down his spine. The sudden medical check-up. The dismissed guards. The rock.
"It was a setup," Arthur whispered, realizing the depth of the trap. "You knew. Both of you knew all along."
"Of course we knew," Evelyn laughed, stepping into the room and tossing the recorder onto the table. "You thought you were the only one who could play the system? You've been using this company to launder money for years, leaving my late husband—your own son—to take the blame before he died. We found the offshore keys weeks ago, Arthur. We just needed you to admitting it on camera."
Arthur snarled, his healthy legs swinging out of the bed completely now, abandoning the charade. "It doesn't matter! Even with that recording, if I go down, the family goes down! The Vance name becomes worthless. You'll be beggars!"
"We won't," Leo interrupted. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a tablet, turning the screen toward his grandfather.
Arthur’s eyes widened as he stared at the screen. It was a live feed of the global stock market. The ticker for Vance Industries was frozen, but a massive, anonymous short-selling order had been executed just twenty minutes ago—right when Leo walked into the room with the stone.
"I didn't just smash your cast, Grandfather," Leo said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. "I shorted our own company's stock using the ghost accounts we intercepted from your files last night. In exactly five minutes, this video goes public. The stock will crash to zero."
Arthur clutched his chest. "You... you destroyed everything!"
"No," Leo corrected him, a faint, chilling smile finally appearing on his young face. "We bought the debt. When the company crashes, we buy it back for pennies on the dollar under a new name. Free of your debts. Free of your fraud. And most importantly... free of you."
The sound of police sirens began to wail in the distance, growing louder and closer by the second.
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Arthur slumped onto the floor, surrounded by the shattered pieces of his fake cast, completely defeated by the twelve-year-old boy he had dismissed as a mere child.
Leo walked to the door, never looking back. "The doctors were right, Grandfather. It really wasn't healing. So I had to break it."
