Chapter 5 - Ghost from the Past
By midnight, Ava was resting peacefully, the painkillers having finally kicked in.
I sat at the wooden dining table, disassembling and cleaning my pistol.
Claire sat across from me, a laptop open in front of her. She had tapped into my encrypted servers before Marcus could wipe them.
"He's been siphoning your offshore accounts for thirty-six months," she said, scrolling through lines of code.
"Three years," I muttered. "Since Sarah died."
Emma walked into the room, rubbing her eyes. She carried a worn, framed photograph of her mother.
She walked past me and set the photo down on the table, right next to Claire's laptop.
"Marcus did it," Emma said.
My blood turned to ice. I dropped the slide of my gun. "Emma. What did you say?"
She looked at me, her six-year-old eyes holding a trauma no child should bear.
"The bad loud noise," Emma pointed at the picture. "Marcus gave Mommy the keys. He smiled."
I couldn't breathe.
The police ruled it a rival hit. My own internal investigation blamed a Chicago street gang, whom I eradicated in retaliation.
"He set you up," Claire said quietly, looking at the banking logs. "He used the gang as a scapegoat to blind you, while he slowly bought off your lieutenants."
May you like
My knuckles turned white around the grip of my gun.
Marcus hadn't just betrayed my business. He murdered my wife.
