Chapter 9 - The Set Trap
The name Ethan revealed was Julian Sterling—one of New England's most powerful real estate billionaires and the largest donor to the state attorney general's campaign. Unsurprisingly, all prior investigations into Daniel Carver's death had been quietly buried or redirected toward natural causes. Sterling was the mastermind steering the entire money laundering and market manipulation machine of Whitaker Development.
Claire knew that suing a figure of Sterling's magnitude based solely on a convict's prison testimony was suicide. She needed ironclad proof—something capable of shaking Boston's political and financial foundations to their core.
The plan was meticulously crafted over two weeks of secret coordination with the FBI. Noah, safely back at school under deep undercover protection, showed incredible bravery helping his mother locate an old family safe key hidden behind the study bookshelf. That key unlocked a portable hard drive containing complete audio recordings of closed-door meetings between Ethan, Madeline, and Julian Sterling plotting to usurp Daniel Carver's assets.
However, the opposition had scented danger. One weekend evening, as Claire stepped out of Harbor General Hospital, a sleek black sedan without license plates suddenly surged onto the sidewalk, aiming straight for her.
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The razor-sharp reflexes of a former ER nurse saved her life by inches. She rolled into a roadside flowerbed, suffering only minor scrapes on her arm. But the bag she carried—holding a backup of the encrypted hard drive—was violently ripped from her grasp by a masked thug who leaped from the car.
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