Chapter 2 - The Architect of Lies
The hospital room smelled of antiseptic and cheap lavender air freshener. Every breath I took felt like papercuts stretching across my collarbone. The second-degree burns on my shoulder and back had been dressed in thick silver-sulfadiazine bandages, making me look like a broken warrior wrapped in foil.
Daniel sat in the vinyl armchair by the window, his laptop open. To anyone else, he was the picture of a devoted, exhausted husband staying overnight in a sterile room. To me, he was a vulture waiting to see if the carcass was fully dead.
“The doctor says you’ll have minimal scarring if we use the private clinic I selected,” Daniel said without looking up from his screen. “I told them we’ll handle the insurance paperwork ourselves. No need to involve your old firm’s policy.”
Of course. He didn’t want the insurance investigators looking at the medical codes for third-degree liquid-fat burns.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my voice hoarse from the smoke and screaming.
“Vivian is distraught, Clara,” he continued, finally looking at me. His eyes were that beautiful, icy blue that had charmed me three years ago in a high-end charity gala. Now, they were just cold. “She’s at home cleaning up the mess you made. She feels terrible that your clumsiness ruined her favorite copper pot.”
The sheer audacity of the lie almost made me laugh, but the movement tugged at the raw skin on my chest, sending a violent spasm of pain through my body. I closed my eyes, letting him believe I was drifting off to sleep.
In reality, my mind was racing back to the hidden files.
For the past six months, I had been tracking the finances of Cole & Sons Logistics, the family shipping business Daniel managed. It was supposed to be a thriving enterprise, but my private audits revealed a black hole of debt. Daniel had been skimming money from the employee pension funds to pay off offshore creditors.
But the real shocker was the life insurance policy.
Three weeks ago, I found a digital copy of a term-life insurance policy under my name. The payout was five million dollars. The beneficiary? A holding company owned entirely by Vivian Cole. The policy had a clause that paid double in the event of accidental death.
An accidental fire. An accidental fall. An accidental spill of boiling oil that leads to a fatal infection.
They didn’t just want me gone. They needed me dead to save their family empire. And they needed the world to believe I was a clumsy, fragile woman who couldn't even walk through her own kitchen without causing a disaster.
A soft knock on the door broke the silence.
May you like
The door pushed open, and a woman in a grey tailored suit walked in. She was carrying a manila folder and a cup of lukewarm hospital coffee.
Rachel Ortiz.
