Chapter 14 - The Final Confession
The interrogation room in the federal field office thirty miles north was stark, windowless, and illuminated by a harsh overhead fluorescent light that hummed with a low, irritating frequency. Victoria sat rigidly at the metal table, her wrists cuffed to the bolted anchor, her blonde hair slightly messy, though she still wore an air of arrogant detachment as she stared straight ahead at the recording camera.
The heavy steel door swung open, and Arthur walked into the room, his dark coat trailing behind him. He didn't sit down. He simply stood on the opposite side of the metal table, looking down at the woman who had shared his home, shared his life, and tried to murder his child with chilling, calculated indifference.
Victoria slowly raised her head, her blue eyes locking onto his with a cold, mocking smirk. "You look tired, Arthur. All this drama over a sickly child who was never going to inherit a fraction of what you think she will. You should have let it happen. We could have split the portfolio and walked away cleanly."
"You locked her in a freezing cellar and watched her suffocate while you argued about a social reception," Arthur said, his voice terrifyingly calm, devoid of any shouting or dramatic rage. "You used a twenty-five-year-old maid as a scapegoat and lied to my face in my own kitchen."
"Business, Arthur. Just cold, hard business," Victoria snapped, leaning forward until the handcuffs rattled against the steel table. "The board owns the federal regulators, they own the probate judges, and within forty-eight hours, my legal team will have this entire arrest thrown out on technicalities. You can't touch me."
The door opened behind Arthur, and Agent Miller stepped inside, tossing a thick digital recording tablet onto the metal table right in front of Victoria. The screen lit up instantly, playing a crystal-clear audio file captured from the master safe’s hidden backup recorder—a conversation between Victoria and the head of the corporate board recorded just an hour before the police arrived.
—"If the girl doesn't make it through the night, the trust dissolves automatically."
—"Consider it done. The maid will take the blame, and Arthur will be too busy grieving to look at the paperwork."—
Victoria’s confident smirk vanished instantly, the color draining completely from her face as she stared at the glowing tablet screen in absolute horror. The absolute foundation of her legal armor crumbled into dust in a matter of seconds.
"That... that's fabricated," Victoria stammered, her polished aristocratic composure finally shattering into jagged pieces. "You can't use that! It was obtained without a warrant!"
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"It was backed up on an automated cloud server registered under your personal offshore shell corporation, Victoria," Miller said smoothly, tapping the screen. "Your own corporate partners recorded every instruction you gave them to protect themselves when things went south. You were never their partner. You were their disposable asset."
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