Chapter 4 - The Dinner Party of Deception
Two days later, Lily was resting in a private recovery room, heavily medicated and sleeping peacefully. I had arranged for round-the-clock private security outside her door—two former Marines I trusted with my life. Mark hadn't been allowed back near the floor after my security team made it clear that his presence constituted a hostile threat.
I left the hospital for a few hours to go back to Lily and Mark’s house. I needed to see the crime scene before Mark had a chance to clean it up properly or tamper with any evidence.
The house was a modern suburban fortress in an upscale gated community—all glass, minimalist furniture, and sterile white walls. It looked like a showroom, not a home.
I used the spare key Lily had given me months ago.
The front door clicked open. The house was dead silent. I walked into the grand foyer, my eyes scanning the polished hardwood staircase leading up to the second floor.
At the base of the stairs, near the corner of the living room wall, there was a faint discoloration on the baseboard. I knelt down and touched it. It was dry, dark, and unmistakable.
Blood.
Not a massive pool, but a splatter—the kind caused by a direct, high-impact blow against a sharp wooden corner. But it wasn't at the top of the stairs, where someone would trip and fall downward. It was at the bottom, facing outward, as if someone had been slammed against the wall from a standing position.
Mark lied. Again.
I stood up and walked through the house, opening doors, checking closets, searching for anything that could explain what had happened three months ago.
In Mark’s home office, a sleek room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a mahogany desk, everything was locked down digitally. His desktop computer required a biometric scan or a complex password. But Mark was arrogant. Abusers always believed they were the smartest people in any room. They left traces because they never expected anyone to look.
I pulled a small flash drive from my pocket—a keylogger device Miller had given me—and slipped it into the USB port of Mark’s printer, which was networked to his main computer. Within thirty seconds, the device began quietly downloading the background logs and cached files from his workstation.
While the data downloaded, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was Miller.
“Daniel,” Miller said without preamble. “You asked about three months ago. I dug into Mark’s financial records, medical records, and local police blotters. Guess what I found?”
“Tell me,” I said, walking over to Mark’s bookshelf and running my fingers along the spines of expensive leather-bound books.
“Three months ago, Lily went to an urgent care clinic thirty miles away from their house. She didn't use her insurance; she paid cash. The diagnosis listed on the clinic log? A fractured wrist and severe concussion.”
My grip on a book tightened so hard my knuckles turned white. “Did she say how it happened?”
“According to the nurse’s notes, Lily claimed she fell off a kitchen stool while changing a lightbulb. But here’s the kicker, Daniel: look at Mark’s credit card statements from that exact same week. He made a large cash withdrawal of ten thousand dollars, and he transferred ownership of a second car—a black sedan—to a woman named Sarah Jenkins.”
“Sarah Jenkins?” I frowned. “Who the hell is Sarah Jenkins?”
“That’s the most interesting part,” Miller replied, his voice dropping lower. “Sarah Jenkins is a senior loan officer at Apex Financial. She’s also Mark’s executive assistant. And property records show she recently moved into a luxury apartment downtown—paid for entirely by a corporate slush fund managed by Mark Vance.”
The puzzle pieces snapped into place with terrifying clarity.
An affair. Extortion. A secret life.
And Lily must have found out about it three months ago. That was why she had been hurt the first time—a warning shot. And when she tried to dig deeper or threaten to expose him, Mark had snapped her jaw in six places to make sure she could never speak of it again.
“Send me the address of Sarah Jenkins’ apartment,” I said coldly.
May you like
“Daniel, what are you planning?” Miller asked, a note of caution in his voice. “If you go after them outside the legal framework—”
“I’m not going to touch them, Miller,” I interrupted, staring at the flash drive as it finished downloading. “I’m just going to pay them a little visit. Apex Financial is going to have a very interesting Monday morning.”
