Chapter 8 - The Alliance in the Shadows

At three in the morning, the back door of Nathan's clinic clicked open again.

Willa stepped inside, soaked to the skin, carrying a heavy black backpack. Beside her stood an older woman with sharp, piercing eyes and a briefcase handcuffed to her wrist.

"Austin," Willa said, her voice trembling with adrenaline. "This is Evelyn Cross. Sarah’s personal trust attorney."

Evelyn set her briefcase down and unlocked it with a tiny silver key. "Austin, your late wife wasn't stupid. She knew Orson Vance and his daughter were corporate leeches."

"What do you have, Evelyn?" I asked, checking on Juniper, who was finally sleeping peacefully on the clinic bed under the soft hiss of the oxygen line.

"Sarah created a dead-man's clause in her corporate trust," Evelyn explained, laying out three thick legal dossiers stamped with red wax. "If any member of the Vance family attempts to contest custody or manipulate the guardianship of her heir, an automatic forensic audit is triggered across all fifteen shell companies Orson uses to launder executive funds."

"And look at this," Willa pulled a flash drive from her pocket. "I didn't just back up the living room video. I hacked Tabitha’s cloud account using her security questions. I found three months of text messages between her and a corrupt compounding pharmacist in town, ordering custom uncalibrated inhalers."

"She planned this for months," I breathed, reading the sickening text threads on Willa's tablet.

Make sure the batch looks authentic. My niece needs to look like an unavoidable medical failure.

"This is enough to put them both behind bars for twenty years," Evelyn stated firmly. "The problem is getting this evidence before a legitimate state judge before Orson's pocket judge Higgins signs the conservatorship order at eight a.m."

"How do we bypass Higgins?" I asked.

"State Supreme Court Justice Elena Morales is arriving at the district courthouse at seven-thirty for an appellate circuit review," Evelyn smiled thinly. "She outranks Higgins by two tiers. But you have to hand-deliver the petition to her in the main rotunda before Higgins convenes his closed-door hearing."

May you like

The housekeeper was supposed to be invisible. Instead, Sophia Hale becam...

The housekeeper was supposed to be invisible. Instead, Sophia Hale became the only person who could expose a massive conspiracy in...

My Husband Hit Me at Dinner—Then His Sister-in-Law Whispered, “Tell the...

"“You and Adrian can rent somewhere smaller,” he said. “A young married couple does not need two bedrooms.” Several relatives nodd...

A federal judge thought his power could cover up a murder. He didn't exp...

"A federal judge thought his power could cover up a murder. He didn't expect her to survive the 20-foot fall. ⚖️🩸The pristine whi...

"They'll have the entrance guarded," I said.

"Then we don't use the front entrance," Willa grinned fiercely. "Grandpa built the original courthouse HVAC system thirty years ago. And I happen to have the blueprints."