Chapter 5
We went to the police station the next morning.
Detective Carter was already there, waiting for us.
She’d called my mother at seven a.m., asking her to come in to make a formal statement.
She had no idea what was coming.
We sat in the small interview room for two hours.
I told her everything.
From the beginning.
How Richard had always favored Madison.
How I’d seen him lingering by the champagne table.
How I’d watched him pull the packet from his pocket and pour the white powder into my glass.
How I’d been too scared to say anything at first, too afraid no one would believe me.
Then my mother told her what she’d heard in the family lounge.
The will.
The seventy percent.
Richard’s plan to drug me out of my inheritance.
His confession that he’d meant the sedative for me, not Madison.
Detective Carter took it all down in her notebook, her face getting graver with every word.
When we finished, she closed her notebook and sat back, looking at both of us.
“Mrs. Brooks. Natalie. What you’re alleging here… it’s very serious. Attempted murder. Conspiracy to defraud an estate. If what you’re saying is true, your husband is looking at a minimum of twenty years in federal prison.”
“I know,” my mother said, her voice steady. “And I want you to arrest him. Today. Before he can hurt either of my daughters again.”
Detective Carter nodded.
“We’ll need to move fast. If he suspects you’ve talked… he might try to run. Or destroy evidence. I’ll put two unmarked cars on his house right now. And I’ll get a warrant for his arrest and a search warrant for his office and his safe. If there’s any trace of that sedative anywhere in his possession, we’ll find it.”
She stood up.
“Wait here. I’ll go get the paperwork started. Someone will bring you both some coffee.”
She left the room.
My mother reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
“We’re doing the right thing, baby. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but we are.”
I nodded.
But I wasn’t so sure.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Madison.
She was still in the ICU.
Still unconscious.
When she woke up… she was going to learn that her beloved father had tried to kill her sister.
And that she’d almost died because of it.
That her whole perfect life had been a lie.
I didn’t know if she’d ever be able to handle that.
We were halfway through our second cup of coffee when Detective Carter burst back into the room.
Her face was white.
Her notebook was gone.
“Mrs. Brooks. Natalie. I need you to listen to me very carefully.”
She leaned across the table, her voice urgent.
“Richard Brooks isn’t at his house. Our units got there ten minutes ago. The place is empty. His car is gone. His suitcase is gone. His passport is missing from the safe.”
My mother’s hand flew to her throat.
“He ran?”
“It looks like it. But we’ve got every airport, train station, and bus terminal within a two-hundred-mile radius on lockdown. He can’t get out of the country. Not with his name flagged in every system.”
She paused.
“There’s something else. While we were searching the house… we found something in Richard’s home office. Hidden behind a panel in the wall. A locked metal box. We forced it open.”
She slid a thick manila folder across the table toward us.
“Inside were documents. A lot of documents. Your husband has been running a very sophisticated embezzlement scheme out of Brooks Industries for the last five years. He’s siphoned almost forty million dollars into offshore accounts. Accounts that only he has access to.”
My mother gasped.
“Forty million? But the audits… the accountants—”
“He paid them off,” Detective Carter said flatly. “All of them. We found receipts. Wire transfers. Everything. If Natalie hadn’t inherited controlling interest in the company when she graduated… he would have drained every last cent and left nothing but an empty shell. The whole company would have collapsed. Hundreds of people would have lost their jobs. Your family would have been penniless.”
She looked at me.
“Your grandfather knew, Natalie. Somehow, he found out what Richard was doing. That’s why he changed the will. He knew you were the only one he could trust to save the company. To protect the employees. To stop Richard from destroying everything he’d built.”
I stared at the folder, my mind reeling.
My grandfather.
The quiet, gruff old man who’d always slipped me extra cookies at family dinners and told me I was “the smart one.”
He’d known.
He’d seen what Richard was.
And he’d trusted me to fix it.
Even when I hadn’t trusted myself.
“Detective,” I said, looking up. “If he’s got forty million dollars in offshore accounts… and he’s on the run… he doesn’t need the company anymore, does he?”
Detective Carter’s eyes darkened.
“No. He doesn’t. He’s got enough money to live like a king for the rest of his life, wherever he ends up. If he gets out of the country, we may never get him back.”
A cold knot formed in my stomach.
Richard was out there.
Free.
Angry.
Desperate.
And he knew exactly who’d turned him in.
Me.
And my mother.
He had nothing left to lose now.
No company.
No reputation.
No favorite daughter to impress.
Nothing but forty million dollars and a burning need for revenge.
“Detective,” I said, my voice tight. “We need protection. Right now. For me. For my mother. And for Madison. If Richard is desperate enough to run… he’s desperate enough to come back and finish what he started.”
Detective Carter was already reaching for her radio.
“Already on it. I’ve got two uniformed officers posted outside Madison’s room 24/7. And I’m arranging for a protective detail to be with you and your mother at all times until we have him in custody. No one gets to any of you. Not while I’m on this case.”
She was as good as her word.
By the time we got back to the hospital that afternoon, there were two armed police officers standing outside Madison’s door.
Another two plainclothes detectives followed my mother and me everywhere we went.
We weren’t allowed to go anywhere alone.
Not even to the bathroom.
It was suffocating.
Scary.
But necessary.
That night, I was sitting alone by Madison’s bed, holding her hand, when her fingers twitched.
Just a little movement.
Almost unnoticeable.
I froze.
“Madison?”
Her eyelids fluttered.
Once.
May you like
Twice.
And then, slowly, painfully, she opened her eyes.
