flash
The neon lights of the ambulance flashed frantic red and white against the rain-slicked pavement of Elmwood Avenue, casting an eerie, bleeding hue across Daniel Carter’s face. He stood on the curb, his expensive tailored jacket soaked through, his hands jammed deep into his pockets to hide a barely perceptible tremor. / Chapter 3 / 8

Chapter 3 - The Digital GhostThe tinny audio filled the sterile interrogation room, sending a chill straight down Detective Brooks’s spine.

“...he’s standing right behind me, Emily. He thinks I don't see him in the hallway mirror. If anything happens to me tonight... if you hear that I fell... do not let him get away with it. He’s been moving the assets offshore for three months. He thinks I’m stupid, but I found the transfer papers in his home office safe.”

The recording cut off abruptly with the sharp sound of a door swinging open, a muffled gasp, and the heavy thud of a struggle before static consumed the speaker.

Brooks stared at the phone, then slowly raised his gaze to meet Emily’s fierce, unyielding stare. "Why didn't you bring this to us immediately?"

"Because Daniel locked me out of Clara's cloud storage within an hour of her being declared dead," Emily hissed, her voice trembling. "He wiped her laptop remotely. He thought he erased everything. But Clara backed her phone up to a physical local drive that she kept in my apartment because she didn't trust him."

"Smart woman," Brooks muttered, a grim smile touching the corner of his mouth. "Too late for her, but more than enough for us."

"He killed her for her shares in CarterTech," Emily said, tears finally spilling over her lashes, though her voice remained steady. "She owned forty percent of the company. A month ago, she told him she wanted a divorce and a full financial audit. He stood to lose everything he built."

"And he thought staging an accidental fall down the front steps would look clean," Brooks said, standing up and buttoning his jacket. "He thought wrong. Mr. Carter is about to experience a very rude awakening."

"Bring him down, Detective," Emily whispered fiercely. "Make him pay for every single second he made my sister suffer."

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The rain tapped a frantic rhythm against the glass of Marissa’s cramped,...

My hand froze inches from the cold steel of the Sig Sauer P226. Beneath the amber glow of the bedside lamp, the source of the warmth against my side wasn't an assassin, an operative from a rival syndicate, or a traitorous lieutenant.

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The silence in the master bedroom stretched so tight I could hear the slow, heavy drip of my own pulse in my ears. Dominic Rossi’s dark eyes locked onto mine, burning with a feverish intensity that should have sent me running back down the hallway and out into the rain

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"Consider it done," Brooks replied. But even as he spoke the words, a nagging sense of unease lingered in his chest. Men like Daniel Carter—calculating, wealthy, arrogant—rarely leave themselves completely exposed without a backup plan.

And as Brooks was about to discover, Daniel had anticipated every single move they were going to make.

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