Chapter 8 - The Midnight Break-In
The apartment in the West Village was technically still half mine legally, a fact Hail had conveniently chosen to ignore. Returning there late at night was a calculated risk, but I needed the original hard copy of our marriage settlement agreements and a backup drive containing old joint tax returns that had been locked in our bedroom safe. I slipped my key into the deadbolt, turning it with absolute silence. The foyer was pitch black, smelling faintly of expensive cologne and stale takeout.
As I padded softly down the hallway toward the home office, a sudden clatter from the kitchen made me freeze. I pressed my back against the wall, my heart hammering a steady, controlled rhythm. A beam of light flickered across the living room rug. Peering around the corner, I saw Hail standing in the dim light of the refrigerator, looking disheveled, his silk tie undone and hanging loosely around his collar. He looked ten years older than he had a month ago, hollow-eyed and frantic. He was swigging straight from a bottle of expensive scotch while aggressively shredding documents over the kitchen island. He wasn't just losing his grip; he was actively destroying evidence that could implicate him in federal wire fraud. I pulled my phone from my blazer, switched on the high-definition video recorder, and captured every single second of his panicked destruction. He could shred all the paper he wanted, but the digital record of his unraveling was already secure in the cloud.
