Chapter 5 - The Hidden Ledger
While Grant maintained a public facade of a grieving, devoted husband in the hospital lobby, back at the Whitmore family estate, a quiet storm was brewing.
Rebecca’s laptop remained locked in her home office. Grant had tried to access it twice before the police sealed the premises, but her biometric lock had thwarted him. What Grant didn't know was that Rebecca had synced her home office drive to a secure cloud server accessible by her estranged brother, Marcus.
Marcus, a forensic accountant living in Chicago, had received an automated security alert when Rebecca's medical emergency triggered her emergency broadcast system. Logging into her shared cloud drive, he didn't look at family photos. He looked at her financial logs and encrypted notes.
There, hidden inside a folder labeled Baby Registry, was a digital diary entry dated two weeks prior:
May you like
Grant thinks I don't know about the company's debt. Whitmore Medical Supply is facing bankruptcy due to the failed acquisition of the synthetic paralytic patents. If I die before giving birth, my inheritance from my father activates immediately, clearing Grant’s corporate liabilities. Judith looked at me today the way a predator looks at a wounded deer.
Marcus stared at the screen, his blood running cold. He picked up his phone and dialed a direct line to Detective Miller.
