Chapter 4 - The Confession Beneath the Oxygen Mask
My blood turned to pure liquid ice.
"Gordon threatened your life?" I choked out, pressing her knuckles against my trembling lips.
"He showed me photos of your car... cut brake lines... he said you were a liability to the board," Daisy wept softly.
"I was two months pregnant with Annie. I couldn't risk our baby... I had to keep your daughter alive."
"What about the fifty million dollars?" I demanded, the puzzle pieces spinning violently in my mind.
"The accounting ledger showed your personal signature authorizing an offshore transfer to the Cayman Islands!"
Daisy shook her head weakly, coughing until the monitor beside her bed beeped in frantic alarm.
"I never saw a single dollar, Alister. Gordon took my passport, my phone, and my grandmother's sketchbooks."
"He forced me to endorse blank stock assignment certificates... he said he was moving funds to protect the company."
She reached beneath her thin mattress with trembling fingers, pulling out a small, dog-eared leather diary tied with a shoestring.
"I kept the deposit slips he accidentally left behind... the account routing numbers... he used a dummy shell corporation named Bell-Craft."
"He put my name on the shell company to frame me for the theft, while the secondary beneficiary account was held under Renata’s maiden name."
I opened the brittle pages of the diary.
Taped inside were authenticated transaction receipts from Zurich and Grand Cayman, dated three days before Daisy disappeared.
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The beneficiary signature for the release of fifty million dollars was not Daisy’s looping cursive.
It was Renata’s distinctive, razor-sharp script, verified by a notary stamp from Gordon’s personal law firm in Midtown.
