Chapter 3 - The Audit of Blood
The ballroom fell into an absolute, suffocating silence.
The guests stared at me—the woman lying in a puddle of blood and blue icing—as if I had suddenly transformed into a creature of legend.
Charles Calloway let out a strangled, choked gasp. His eyes bulged out of his head as he looked at me. "You... you miserable, ungrateful little leech! We gave you a life! We brought you into this family!"
"You brought me into this family to be your fall girl, Charles," I rasped out, fighting through the wave of nausea as the paramedics cut open the side of my silk dress to inspect my belly.
The paramedic pressed a portable ultrasound probe against my abdomen. The rhythmic, rapid sound of a baby's heartbeat suddenly echoed softly from the device's speaker.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
I closed my eyes, tears finally spilling down my cheeks. He was alive. Hunter was fighting.
"Baby's heart rate is elevated, but stable," the paramedic reported rapidly into his radio. "We have signs of placental abruption from the impact. We need an immediate transport to Mount Sinai maternity trauma unit!"
"Get her on the gurney!" Agent Vance ordered.
As the paramedics carefully lifted me onto the rolling stretcher, Ryan began to scream like a terrified child.
"Vanessa! Tell them! Tell them I didn't know about the cartel money!" Ryan sobbed, his face pressed into the velvet sofa cushion as the handcuffs clicked tightly around his wrists. "Vanessa, please! I'm the father of your baby! You love me!"
I turned my head on the gurney pillow, looking down at my husband.
"You asked me six months ago why I was spending so many late nights in your study, Ryan," I said, my voice cold and smooth as glass. "You thought I was looking through your credit card statements to see where you were taking Savannah. You laughed at me. You called me a pathetic, suspicious housewife."
Ryan stared at me, his eyes bloodshot, filled with desperate realization.
"I wasn't looking at your credit cards, Ryan," I whispered. "I was copying your private server's encryption keys. I was downloading the secondary ledgers for Calloway Financial. The ledgers that proved you personally signed off on laundering forty million dollars for the Sinaloa syndicate."
"No... no, no, no!" Savannah shrieked beside him.
When the female agents moved to handcuff Savannah as an accomplice named in the offshore asset accounts, the twenty-two-year-old girl lost all her polished composure. She began kicking, slapping, and screaming at Ryan.
"You lied to me, you bastard!" Savannah yelled, punching Ryan's shoulder with her manicured fist. "You said you were worth three billion dollars! You said you were going to buy me the penthouse in SoHo! You ruined my life!"
"Get her out of here," Agent Vance commanded, waving her hand dismissively.
As the agents dragged Savannah, Eleanor, and Charles toward the waiting police cruisers outside, Lily rushed past the security line, falling into step beside my rolling gurney.
"Vanessa! Oh god, Vanessa, I'm here!" Lily cried, holding my right hand tightly.
"I'm okay, Lil," I gasped out, squeezing her fingers. "The files... are they safe?"
"Everything was uploaded to the federal server twenty minutes ago," Lily whispered, wiping her tears. "You did it, Vee. You destroyed them all."
As my stretcher was rolled out through the grand entrance of the Calloway estate, two hundred reporters and news cameras—tipped off by Agent Vance's media team—were waiting behind the iron gates. Flashes exploded like lightning in the gray afternoon sky.
I looked back one last time.
Ryan Calloway was being led down the front marble steps in steel wrist and ankle chains, flanked by four armed officers. His custom suit was ruined, his hair was matted with dirt, and he was crying uncontrollably as the cameras captured every second of his humiliation.
He looked up and caught my eye.
I didn't glare. I didn't yell.
May you like
I simply raised my right hand—the hand still wearing the twenty-carat diamond engagement ring he had used to buy my silence six years ago—and slowly slipped it off my finger.
I let it drop into the puddle of mud beside the ambulance wheels.
