Chapter 3 - Sins in High Definition
The silence in the hospital room was so thick it felt like suffocating underwater.
Dr. Bennett gave the nurses a sharp nod, signaling them to roll my gurney toward the private ultrasound bay.
"Marcus, go with her," Arthur ordered quietly, never moving his eyes from Isabella.
"No," Marcus hissed, his eyes locked onto Isabella’s terrified, sweating face. "What did she do to Khloe’s car?"
Isabella shook her head violently, pressing herself flat against the painted drywall.
"It’s a deepfake! Arthur fabricated that audio! He’s always wanted to destroy your father’s company!" she screamed.
Arthur calmly swiped the screen, showing the continuous timestamp in the corner of the footage.
"This is an encrypted cloud server, Isabella," Arthur replied smoothly. "Tamper-proof, directly connected to our private firm."
The recording on the tablet kept playing, Isabella's voice echoing through the quiet recovery room.
"Your little brake failure on Highway 9 was supposed to finish you off," recorded Isabella sneered.
"Too bad Marcus hired that private mechanic before you drove down the canyon."
I remembered that terrifying afternoon three weeks ago when the pedal went completely limp beneath my foot.
I had narrowly steered into a gravel runaway ramp, nearly rolling the SUV into a deep ditch.
Marcus had told me it was a manufacturing defect, a tragic recall issue that he promised to handle personally.
Now, the truth stood right in front of us, wearing torn silk and smeary designer makeup.
Marcus stepped across the floor, his tall frame looming over Isabella until she shrank toward the tile.
"You tried to kill my wife and our child on Highway 9?" Marcus whispered, his teeth bared in fury.
"She doesn't deserve you!" Isabella shrieked, dropping all pretense of innocence. "She took everything from me!"
"You were an executive assistant!" Marcus roared, his voice shattering the bedside lamps on the wall.
"I was the woman who built your empire from the ground up while she sat at home painting canvases!" she yelled back.
The two security guards moved in closer, their hands resting on their utility belts.
"Call the police commissioner," Marcus told Arthur, never blinking. "Have the precinct send homicide detectives."
"Attempted murder, vehicular sabotage, and aggravated assault," Arthur said, tapping his phone. "They're on their way."
Isabella suddenly began to laugh, a wild, jagged sound that sent chills down my spine from the gurney.
"Go ahead, Marcus! Call them!" she laughed, wiping blood from the corner of her swollen mouth.
She pointed a shaking, manicured finger straight at Marcus’s chest.
"If I go down for that brake line, you're going to prison right alongside me!" she screamed.
Marcus stopped cold, his jaw tightening as an unreadable shadow crossed his eyes.
Arthur paused his dialing, his gaze shifting sharply from Isabella to his younger brother.
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I looked at Marcus from the gurney, my heart suddenly dropping into a bottomless pit of cold fear.
"What is she talking about, Marcus?" I whispered, my voice barely audible above the hum of the monitors.
