Chapter 4 - The Midnight Flight
"He shot him! Adrian shot him!" Vanessa shrieked, her voice tearing through the courtroom. She dragged herself away from Marcus Brody’s bleeding body, her white dress stained crimson.
"Drop the weapon! Drop it now!" three bailiffs screamed, their guns drawn and aimed directly at Adrian’s chest.
Adrian looked down at the silver revolver in his hand as if he didn't even remember pulling it out. The revelation of Vanessa’s pregnancy with his best friend had snapped the final thread of his sanity. The cold, calculating billionaire was gone; in his place stood a monster exposed.
With a sickening laugh, Adrian dropped the gun. It clattered against the marble floor. He raised his hands, a twisted, manic smile spreading across his face as his eyes locked onto me.
"You think this is over, Elena?" Adrian shouted as the bailiffs slammed him onto the ground, forcing his arms behind his back. "You think you’ve won? Look at your father! Look at what his law did to my family! I’ll be out by midnight! My lawyers will have me out before the ink on the arrest report is dry!"
"Get him out of here!" Judge Reed bellowed from the bench, his voice commanding the room back into some semblance of order. "Call an ambulance! Lock down the building!"
Paramedics flooded the room moments later, but it was too late for Marcus Brody. The CFO was pronounced dead on the courtroom floor. As Adrian was dragged away in handcuffs, screaming profanities, the reporters rushed out of the doors, desperate to broadcast the biggest scandal in the state’s history: Billionaire Adrian Vale Murders CFO In Open Court Over Pregnant Mistress’s Affair.
An hour later, the courthouse was a ghost town, surrounded by police tape and flashing red and blue lights. My father brought me into a secure holding room in the basement. Vanessa had been taken to a hospital under police guard, and the court proceedings were officially suspended.
"You need to leave the city tonight, Elena," Thomas said, pacing back and forth in the small room. "Adrian wasn't lying. His family’s network is deep. He has judges on his payroll who will grant him bail on a technicality, or he will use his private security force to break him out before he ever reaches a maximum-security facility. If he gets free, he will come for you."
"I'm not running anymore, Dad," I said, my voice fiercely steady as I rubbed my stomach. "My mother spent her whole life running, and it killed her. I have Adrian’s child inside me. If I run, I’m condemning this baby to a life in the shadows."
"Then we fight," Thomas said, stopping in front of me. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an old, tarnished silver key. "Your mother didn't leave you nothing, Elena. Before she died, she sent me a letter. She told me that if you were ever in danger, I should give you this. It opens a safety deposit box at the Old National Bank in Greenfield—a small town two hours north. Inside that box is the evidence she took twenty-two years ago. The original double ledger. The proof that the Vale empire was built on blood."
I took the key. It felt freezing cold against my palm. "Why didn't you go get it yourself?"
"Because Arthur Vale has had that bank watched for twenty years. If I went near it, they would know. But they don't know you know about it. You have to go tonight. Take my personal security detail. Secure the ledger, and we will bring it straight to the Federal Prosecutors. We bypass the local courts completely."
I nodded, a newfound strength surging through my veins. "Okay. I'll go."
Two hours later, I was in the back of a black SUV, driving through a torrential downpour toward Greenfield. The rhythmic slapping of the windshield wipers did nothing to calm the storm raging in my chest. My father’s trusted head of security, an ex-marine named David, was at the wheel.
"We’re about twenty minutes out, Mrs. Vale," David said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. "The bank manager is a personal friend of your father’s. He’s opening the vault for us after hours."
"Thank you, David," I whispered, looking out the window into the pitch-black night.
Suddenly, a pair of blinding headlights appeared in the rearview mirror.
A massive, armored semi-truck was accelerating rapidly behind us. It didn't slow down as it approached our bumper.
"David..." I warned, panic spiking.
"I see him," David grunted, gripping the steering wheel. He accelerated, but the semi-truck matched our speed, its massive grill gleaming in the rain.
May you like
SLAM!
The truck smashed into our rear bumper. The SUV fishtailed violently. I screamed, clutching my stomach as the vehicle spun out of control on the slick asphalt. David fought the wheel, but the semi-truck hit us again, this time from the side, T-boning the SUV and sending us flying off the road, down a steep embankment, and straight into the dark woods below.
