Chapter 6 - The Wiretap
By Friday afternoon, the trap in the Manhattan mansion was fully baited.
Dr. Paul Harrison, my old college roommate and one of the top neurologists on the East Coast, had spent the last two mornings sneaking in through the service entrance while Vanessa was at her bridal spa appointments. Under the protection of Ryan’s men, Paul had flushed the toxins from my mother’s system and started her on targeted neuro-regenerative therapy.
Even better, my mother was an actress worthy of an Oscar. Whenever Marcus Vane—the disgraced fake doctor—came into the room at four o'clock to administer her afternoon "sedative," my mother closed her eyes and slackened her jaw, pretending to be completely comatose, while Ryan’s hidden team swapped the vials in Marcus’s medical bag with harmless saline water before he even unlocked the cabinet.
At four-thirty, I was sitting in the back of my blacked-out Escalade parked two blocks away from the mansion, wearing a pair of noise-canceling headphones connected to the high-definition video feed inside my mother’s bedroom.
On the tablet screen in my lap, I watched the bedroom door swing open. Vanessa strutted in, wearing a crimson Balenciaga trench coat and carrying three shopping bags from Cartier—paid for with my platinum American Express card earlier that afternoon. Right behind her walked Julian Sterling, looking nervously over his shoulder as he stepped into my mother's private sanctuary.
"Are you crazy bringing me inside the house, Van?" Julian hissed, his voice coming through my headphones with crystal clarity. "What if Logan comes home early? Or one of the guards sees me?"
Vanessa tossed her shopping bags onto my mother’s armchair and laughed—a harsh, ugly sound that bore zero resemblance to the breathless giggle she used with me. "Relax, baby. I told the gate guard you’re the wedding florist measuring the upstairs balconies, and Logan is stuck in an SEC compliance meeting until eight tonight. The man is so obsessed with his spreadsheets he wouldn't notice if the house burned down around him."
Beside me in the SUV, Ryan’s hand tightened on the steering wheel. "Say the word, boss, and I’ll go up there and throw him out the third-floor window right now."
"Wait," I said coldly, my eyes glued to the screen. "Let them hang themselves."
On the monitor, Julian walked over to the bed and looked down at my mother’s motionless form with pure disgust. "She looks half-dead already. Why hasn't Marcus finished it? My guys in Prague are giving me until Tuesday before they start breaking my kneecaps, Vanessa. I need the rest of that trust fund liquid."
Vanessa walked up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and kissing the side of his neck right beside my mother’s bed. My stomach turned not with jealousy—I felt nothing for her anymore—but with sheer revulsion at the violation of my mother’s home.
"Because if she dies before the wedding on Saturday, Logan will postpone the ceremony for the funeral, you idiot," Vanessa snapped, pulling back to check her lipstick in my mother's vanity mirror. "If the wedding gets postponed, the prenup doesn't activate, and the final eighteen-million-dollar wire transfer stays locked in escrow requiring dual signatures. We wait until Saturday night. While Logan and I are in the presidential suite at the Plaza after the reception, Marcus gives the old bitch a massive air embolism in her IV line. To the coroner, it looks like a secondary fatal stroke. Tragic timing, right?"
"And what about Logan?" Julian asked, grabbing her by the hips and pulling her flush against him. "You really going to play the dutiful billionaire's wife while we spend the money?"
Vanessa’s reflection in the mirror smiled like a viper. "For six months? Sure. Just long enough for you to short-sell Bennett Global stock using the insider trade secrets I pull off his home laptop. Once his company crashes and the board ousts him, I file for divorce citing emotional distress from his 'breakdown,' take half of whatever is left of his personal estate, and meet you in Lake Como. As for that pathetic little maid and her brat running away? Good riddance. If they hadn't left on their own, I was going to have Marcus's guy run them off the road on the FDR Drive anyway."
On the bed, hidden beneath the heavy silk duvet so Vanessa and Julian couldn't see it, my mother’s left hand curled into a tight, trembling fist.
I hit the "Save and Encrypt" button on the tablet, sending the timestamped, high-definition audio and video file straight to U.S. Attorney Miller’s private server.
"Got it," I said, pulling off the headphones. My voice was dead calm. "Felony conspiracy to commit murder, wire fraud, corporate espionage, and attempted murder of a witness. All on 4K video."
Ryan looked at me in the rearview mirror. "The wedding rehearsal dinner isn't until tomorrow night, boss, and the ceremony is Saturday at four. Do we have the feds raid the house right now?"
I looked down at the Cartier bags sitting on my mother’s chair on the screen. If the FBI raided the house quietly tonight, Vanessa’s society friends and Julian’s billionaire father would spin the story in the press, claiming it was a domestic misunderstanding, hiring PR crisis firms to muddy the waters in closed-door hearings.
No. Vanessa wanted a high-society spectacle at the St. Regis Hotel on Saturday, with three hundred of New York’s most powerful elites, financial journalists, and her entire social circle watching.
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"No raid tonight," I told Ryan, a cold smile touching my lips. "Have Marcus intercepted the moment he leaves the property today and placed in a federal holding cell with no phone call—make sure Vanessa thinks he's just prepping for Saturday. She wants the wedding of the century? We're going to give her one she'll never forget."
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