Chapter 6 - The Paper Trail
Three weeks later.
I was finally discharged from the hospital, though I spent every single day in the NICU, sitting beside the twin incubators, holding Sophie and Lucas’s tiny, translucent hands through the small portholes. They were getting stronger every day, breathing on their own now, gaining weight steadily.
While my body was physically healing, my professional instincts as a forensic accountant refused to stay dormant.
Sitting in my wheelchair inside the hospital's private family suite, I had a high-end laptop resting on my lap. Ryan sat beside me, surrounded by stacks of financial binders, bank statements, and legal documents Marcus had recovered from Patricia’s residence under a court-issued search warrant.
"Look at this, Ryan," I said, pointing my finger at a cascading spreadsheet on my screen.
Ryan leaned in, squinting at the lines of red highlighted entries. "What is it?"
"Patricia didn't just decide to attack me for $150,000 on a whim," I explained, pulling up a secondary bank ledger. "Look at the dates on these wire transfers."
Over the past three years, Patricia Brooks had accumulated over $600,000 in secret gambling debts across three major casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. To cover her tracks and maintain her lavish, high-society persona in town, she had been systematically embezzling money from the Brooks Family Estate Trust—a trust meant to care for Ryan’s aging father before his passing.
"She emptied Dad's estate?" Ryan asked, his face turning pale with shock.
"Completely," I replied coldly. "She falsified his signature on three reverse mortgages on the family home. The lender was issuing a final notice of foreclosure scheduled for next month. She was facing total financial ruin and public exposure. She needed $150,000 immediately to buy off the primary creditor and delay the auction."
"And Brianna's boutique?" Ryan asked.
"A total lie," I pointed out the fraudulent invoices. "Brianna didn't want to start a boutique. She was acting as Patricia's accomplice, taking cutbacks from the embezzled funds to pay off her own massive personal credit card debts. They targeted our twins' trust because they thought I was weak, naive, and isolated while you were in Singapore."
"They didn't just assault you," Ryan whispered, anger rising in his chest once more. "They planned a total financial execution of our entire future."
Right then, Ryan’s phone buzzed on the table.
He picked it up and placed it on speaker. It was Mr. Harrison, our lead family trust attorney.
"Ryan, Clara," Mr. Harrison’s professional voice echoed through the room. "I just received a call from Patricia’s public defense representative—she fired her private attorney an hour ago after he told her she had zero chance of winning at trial."
"What does she want?" Ryan asked sharply.
"She’s begging for a plea bargain," Mr. Harrison revealed. "Patricia is offering to plead guilty to financial fraud and accessory charges if you agree to drop the attempted murder and child abuse charges against Brianna. She’s claiming Brianna was 'manipulated' by her."
I let out a cold, humorless laugh.
"Tell her no," I said firmly into the phone.
"Clara—" Mr. Harrison started.
May you like
"Tell her," I interrupted, my voice dropping like steel, "that she and her daughter will stand trial in front of a jury of twelve citizens. They will watch the video in open court. Every single frame. We offer zero deals, zero mercy, and zero compromises."
On the other end of the line, Mr. Harrison let out a long, satisfied breath. "I was hoping you'd say that, Mrs. Brooks. I will inform the District Attorney immediately."
