Chapter 6 - The Desperation Move
The legal blow didn't stop him; it ignited a volatile, primitive rage. Two nights after the meeting, my phone pinged with an alert from the security system at my father’s old office—a small, nondescript suite in the city that Daniel had always belittled as "obsolete."
I watched the screen in real-time. Daniel was there, wearing a dark hoodie, his face twisted in a mask of manic desperation. He was trying to pick the lock, kicking the frame with a frantic, animalistic energy. He didn't want a legal resolution anymore; he wanted to find something—anything—that he could use as leverage to force me into submission. He was looking for a physical file, a mistake, a secret.
He didn't know that the office was now a ghost site. It was under 24-hour surveillance by a security firm I had hired, and the police were already en route.
"He's there," I said into the phone, my voice steady.
"We have officers on the scene," the sergeant replied. "Stay where you are, Claire."
I watched as the heavy door to the office finally gave way under his weight. He stormed into the darkness, lit only by the flashlight he held. He started tossing papers, overturning chairs, tearing at the bookshelves in a blind, violent search.
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He looked like a man possessed. He pulled a file from the desk, holding it up like a trophy, thinking he had finally found the "key" to his escape. He stood there for a moment, chest heaving, triumphant.
Then, the red and blue lights began to pulse against the office windows. The police burst in. He froze, the file still in his hand—it was a tax document, completely useless to his cause. As they cuffed him, I finally turned off the monitor. The silence in my apartment was absolute, and for the first time in eight years, it didn't feel like a vacuum waiting to be filled. It felt like freedom.
