Chapter 1 - The Cold Screen
The hospital room smelled of antiseptic and ozone, but the nausea churning in my gut had nothing to do with medicine.
"Say that again," I whispered. My voice scraped against my throat like dry leaves.
Julian didn't answer right away. He stood bathed in the sickly blue glare of his laptop screen, his knuckles white against the edge of the wheeled bedside tray. He had stripped off his blood-soaked flannel shirt; in the harsh fluorescent lighting, the purple welt rising across his cheekbone where his mother had struck him looked like an open brand.
"Julian," I urged, resting a trembling palm over the cold transducer strapped to my abdomen. Beneath the plastic strap, the rhythmic, metallic *gallop-gallop-gallop* of our baby’s heart pushed through the monitor. Fast. Fragile. But alive. "What did she text?"
Julian turned the screen toward me.
The cloud playback was running in a continuous loop. On the high-definition feed of our foyer, I watched myself fall. Again and again. The sickening shove. The unnatural arch of my back. The way my fingers clawed at empty air before the stairs swallowed me whole.
Then came the freeze-frame.
The camera perched above the crown molding had caught Megan’s face in 4K clarity. She wasn’t looking down at my broken body. She was looking at her iPhone. Her manicured thumb flew across the keyboard with the casual boredom of someone ordering a latte.
Julian zoomed in. The software sharpened the pixels on her glowing screen.
Five words. Sent to an unsaved number with an 857 area code.
*She’s broken. Execute the transfer.*
My lungs seized. "Execute the transfer? What transfer?"
"Not mine," Julian said. His voice was terrifyingly calm—the flat, dead tone of a man whose world had just collapsed to bedrock. "The moment the paramedics loaded you into the rig, I called our private banker at J.P. Morgan. The liquidation request on my corporate trust didn't originate from Megan’s IP. It originated from this hospital. Twenty minutes ago."
The door to my room flew open with a violent crack.
Two uniform patrol officers stepped inside, followed immediately by Detective Marcus Ray—a man I knew all too well. He was Evelyn’s second cousin on her father’s side.
"Julian Vance?" Ray said, resting a heavy thumb on his utility belt. "Step away from the patient, please. We have a warrant for your arrest."
"What?" Julian didn't flinch. He planted his boots into the linoleum. "My wife was pushed down thirty oak stairs! My sister tried to kill her and my unborn son!"
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"That’s not the statement Mrs. Evelyn Vance just gave down at the precinct," Ray replied coolly, stepping forward with handcuffs glinting in the pale light. "According to your mother, you attacked Megan in a violent domestic rage, and Clara fell trying to pull you off her."
***
