Chapter 4 - The Paper Trail of Blood
Two days later, I was discharged from the hospital.
I returned to the small apartment I shared with Chloe, hoping for a moment of quiet. Instead, I found my sister packing my clothes into plastic garbage bags.
"What are you doing?" I asked, leaning against the doorframe for support.
Chloe spun around, her eyes red-rimmed, her face bloated from crying. But there was no warmth in her expression—only burning resentment.
"Julian left me, Elena," she said, tossing a handful of my sweaters onto the floor. "His family lawyers served me with separation papers this morning. The Blackwood name is ruined, and it’s all your fault!"
"Chloe, Evelyn tried to murder me!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "She forced poison down my throat!"
"You could have just swallowed it and stayed quiet!" Chloe shrieked, tears streaming down her cheeks. "You always had to be the victim! 'Oh, look at me, my sugar is low!' 'Look at me, my pump hurts!' You ruined the happiest day of my life because you couldn't handle three hours without attention!"
I stood there, paralyzed by the sheer cruelty of her words. This was my sister. The girl I had shared a bedroom with growing up. The girl whose tuition I had helped pay after our parents died.
"I helped you," I whispered. "I loved you."
"Well, I hate you," Chloe said coldly, throwing a garbage bag at my feet. "Get your stuff and get out of my apartment."
Before I could even process where I would go, a heavy knock sounded at the open front door.
Vance Mercer stood there, accompanied by a female federal agent. He took in the scene in a single second—the trash bags, Chloe’s furious face, my shaking hands.
"Miss Vargas," Vance said gently to me. "We have a secure location prepared for you. The government is placing you under witness protection until the trial."
Chloe laughed bitterly. "Witness protection? For her? She’s a nobody!"
Vance turned his gaze toward Chloe. "Your sister is currently the key witness in a multi-million-dollar federal murder and fraud investigation, Miss Vargas. And if you continue to harass her, you will be cited for obstruction of justice."
He picked up my bags himself, refusing to let the other agent touch them, and held out his arm to me.
"Let's go home, Elena," Vance said softly.
I looked at Chloe one last time. She didn't look back. I turned my shoulder and walked out the door, leaving my past behind me.
An hour later, Vance brought me to a secluded townhouse on the outskirts of the city. It was cozy, surrounded by high brick walls, and equipped with state-of-the-art security systems.
Sitting at the dining table was a elderly man in a sharp suit holding a thick leather binder.
"Elena," Vance said, pulling out a chair for me. "This is Arthur Pendelton, senior executor of the Vargas-Thorne Trust."
I paused. "The what?"
Arthur opened the binder. "Elena, your late father wasn't an accountant as you were told. He was the co-founder of Thorne Biometrics—the parent company that owned the patent for the very medical sensors and insulin delivery systems you use today. He owned forty percent of the company."
My breath hitched. "My father?"
"When he died," Arthur continued, "his shares were placed in a blind trust until you turned twenty-five or got married. Evelyn Thorne-Blackwood was your father's distant cousin. She was appointed as the temporary trustee."
Vance leaned forward, his gray eyes dark. "Do you understand now, Elena? If you married Grant, Evelyn would have maintained administrative control over your father's forty-percent stake in Thorne Biometrics—a stake worth nearly two hundred million dollars. But if you died before marrying Grant..."
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"It would revert to Evelyn," I breathed, the horror washing over me in waves. "She didn't just hate my diabetes... she used it. She planned to kill me and make it look like a tragic diabetic complication so she could steal my father's legacy."
"And that," Vance said, laying his hand over mine on the table, "is why we are going to burn her empire to the ground."
