Chapter 7 - A Deal with the Devil
Victor claimed he had rescued my mother from Matthew.
He told police he received an anonymous warning and arrived at the Maritime Exchange moments before Marcus.
The black SUV belonged to a company controlled by Lauren.
The two men guarding my mother had disappeared through another tunnel.
Victor presented himself as a hero.
The police could not hold him.
The recording from years earlier was not enough to prove kidnapping, fraud, or conspiracy.
My mother remembered waking in the vehicle and seeing Victor beside her.
He had loosened the restraints around her wrists.
He had also whispered a warning.
“Tell Adrian to stop protecting Clare.”
That evening, my hospital door opened and Lauren Thorne entered alone.
Marcus immediately moved between us.
Lauren lifted both hands.
“I came to offer evidence.”
She looked different without cameras surrounding her.
Her makeup was smudged.
Her eyes were red.
She had a bruise beneath her collarbone.
“Matthew did that?” I asked.
“He does not only use canes.”
My anger did not become sympathy.
Not yet.
Lauren sat across from my bed.
She admitted the affair had begun three years earlier.
Matthew promised to leave me.
Then he began using her to move money through shell companies.
By the time Lauren understood the scale of the fraud, her name appeared on every document.
She was trapped.
“You still walked into my home wearing his perfume,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You helped him humiliate me.”
“Yes.”
“You watched him beat me?”
Lauren’s eyes lowered.
“I was in the private elevator lobby.”
The air left my lungs.
She had been there.
Matthew had not beaten me after coming home from seeing his mistress.
He had beaten me to impress her.
“He told me you were weak,” Lauren whispered.
“He said you had never contributed anything to the company.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I needed to.”
Her honesty was uglier than another lie.
Lauren revealed that Rachel Bell’s baby was not Matthew’s.
Caleb was Samuel Pierce’s son.
Rachel had tracked Matthew because she believed he was preparing to eliminate Samuel after the Arcadia sale.
The baby sock was their insurance.
Samuel controlled two board votes.
Matthew controlled Samuel through evidence of bribery and insider trading.
Victor controlled all of them.
“What does Victor want?” my father asked.
“Sterling Capital.”
Lauren explained that Victor had spent years hiding losses inside overseas funds.
He needed NexusCore’s sale to Arcadia to generate enough money to conceal the missing assets.
Matthew would receive the public victory.
Victor would receive the money.
Samuel would receive immunity through political connections.
Lauren and Rachel would disappear.
“And Clare?” my mother asked.
Lauren looked at me.
“Matthew planned to frame her for the stolen government data.”
She removed a flash drive from her purse.
“This contains the draft confession.”
I inserted it into an isolated laptop.
The document claimed I had stolen classified data through my father’s contacts and secretly built NexusCore’s first model.
At the bottom was my forged signature.
There was also a scheduled email.
It would be sent to federal investigators in forty-eight hours.
Attached to the email was a video.
The video showed me entering the NexusCore data center at 2:13 a.m.
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I had never been there that night.
But the woman on the screen had my face.
