Chapter 5 - The Encrypted Call
The relentless buzzing of the phone in Elena’s hand felt like a live wire against her palm. The screen illuminated the damp evening air with a stark, glowing rectangle, displaying an incoming video call from a sender simply labeled as 'The Trustee.' The surrounding chaos—the shouting officers, the sobbing assistant being hauled toward a cruiser, and Julian’s defeated slouch—seemed to recede into a distant, muffled hum. Detective Miller noticed her hesitation and reached out a gloved hand, pausing mid-air.
"Don't answer that, ma'am," Detective Miller warned firmly. "That could be an accomplice attempting to sanitize remote servers before our cyber unit mirrors the drives."
Elena stared at the screen, her thumb hovering millimeters over the red decline icon. But something compelled her forward. The face of the caller wasn't a stranger’s; the preview thumbnail, though heavily pixelated, showed the distinct silhouette of her father’s former chief legal counsel—a man who had supposedly passed away in a private plane crash three years prior. With trembling fingers, Elena swiped the green accept button and pressed the phone to her ear.
"Hello?" Elena’s voice broke, echoing strangely in the quiet courtyard.
"Don't trust the woman in the red dress, Elena," a distorted, synthetic voice hissed through the speaker, carrying an eerie metallic timber. "She didn't come here to save you from Julian. She came to inherit the ruins."
Elena’s breath hitched. She whipped her head around to look at Clara, who was standing completely still, watching Elena with an expression that had suddenly shifted from serene to intensely calculating. Clara had not moved an inch toward the police cruisers; instead, she was casually tapping the face of her own platinum wristwatch, her eyes locked dead onto Elena’s phone.
"Who is this?" Elena demanded, pressing the phone harder against her ear as the audio feed crackled with static. "Show yourself! If my father's lawyer is alive—"
"Your father never died in that crash, Elena," the voice interrupted smoothly, cutting her off with chilling finality. "And the baby Clara is carrying isn't Julian’s."
The world seemed to tilt violently on its axis. Elena stumbled, catching herself against the stone rim of the fountain. She looked at Julian, whose eyes widened in sudden, horrifying comprehension as he overheard the tinny sound bleeding from the phone speaker. Julian lunged forward violently against the holding officers, a guttural roar escaping his throat.
"Shut up! Cut the line!" Julian screamed, his face purple with absolute terror.
Detective Miller instantly grabbed Julian, shoving him hard against the side of the cruiser. "What did you just say, Vance? Who is the father?"
Clara finally broke her silence, letting out a low, cold laugh that sent a shiver straight down Elena’s spine. She reached up and pulled a heavy gold locket from beneath the neckline of her sequined red gown, snapping it open to reveal a faded photograph of a man neither Elena nor Julian had ever seen before.
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"The father is the man who owns the bank that holds all of your combined debts, Detective," Clara said softly, stepping into the direct beam of the police headlights. "And he is currently walking through the front gates right now."
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