Chapter 3 - THE GHOST WHO CAME BACK FROM THE DEADThe color drained entirely from Victoria Kincaid’s face, leaving her looking like a porcelain corpse. For the first time in her iron-fisted life, the great matriarch stuttered.
"What... what is this nonsense?" Victoria hissed, her voice trembling slightly before she caught herself, turning her venomous glare onto the board members. "This is a pathetic stunt! My son has lost his mind—he's having a psychotic break over his dead wife!"
"Am I, Mother?" I stepped closer, dropping my phone onto the glass table right in front of her.
The screen was crystal clear. Emily was looking directly into the camera lens, holding our daughter, Lily.
"Hello, Victoria," Emily’s voice echoed softly through the high-end boardroom speakers, broadcasted directly from the device. "Did you really think your private estate outside Boston was escape-proof? Did you really think Dr. Carter wouldn't cut a deal with the feds the moment federal prison time was put on the table?"
Gasps erupted around the table. Board members stood up, shouting over one another. The corporate dynasty of Kincaid Enterprises was disintegrating in real-time.
Victoria’s eyes darted wildly around the room. She realized instantly that her guards had been intercepted, her cronies silenced, and her fortress breached. But Victoria Kincaid did not survive forty years at the top of corporate warfare by surrendering easily.
With a cold, venomous snarl, she reached into her designer handbag, her hand flashing toward a small, pearl-handled revolver.
"If I'm going down," Victoria shrieked, her mask completely shattering, "I'm taking my ungrateful, pathetic son with me!"
Before her fingers could wrap around the grip of the weapon, Agent Vance’s hand clamped down on her wrist with bone-crushing force, twisting her arm behind her back. A second later, the sharp click of steel handcuffs echoed through the silent room.
"Victoria Kincaid," Agent Vance recited smoothly, reading her rights as he shoved her down onto the mahogany table, "you are under arrest for kidnapping, extortion, conspiracy to commit murder, and fraud."
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As the federal marshals hauled my mother away—her screams of absolute rage bouncing off the glass walls—I stood at the head of the table, looking down at the empty chair where she had ruled through fear for decades.
The nightmare was finally over. Or so I thought.
