Chapter 4: Blood and Ink
I stared at the signature until the letters blurred into a meaningless smear of blue ink.
*Justin.*
My mind violently rewound through the events of the night. Justin, bursting into the emergency room. Justin, drenched in snow, roaring in agony, his face twisted in heartbreak at the sight of his wife fused to my husband.
It had all been a performance. Or rather, a partial one.
Justin hadn’t orchestrated the cheating. Maya and Kenneth’s sordid affair in that cheap motel was a genuine betrayal—a rogue variable. But the financial ruin? The Blackwood Syndicate? The theft of my inheritance? That was Justin’s design.
When our father died, he left the lion’s share of the family empire, **Sterling Holdings**, to me, deeming Justin too reckless, too emotionally volatile to run the company. Justin had smiled at the funeral, hugged me, and told me our father made the right choice.
For two years, my own brother had been using Kenneth as a trojan horse. Justin funded Kenneth’s embezzlement, hiding behind the Blackwood Syndicate shell company, slowly draining my assets to take back the empire he believed was his birthright. And Kenneth, ever the greedy parasite, had played along—until his arrogance led him to sleep with Justin’s wife. Justin wasn’t screaming in the ER because his marriage was broken; he was screaming because his pawn had humiliated him.
I was surrounded by monsters. They had smiled at my dinner table, drank my wine, and systematically plotted to destroy my mind, my body, and my legacy.
I stood up, leaving the documents spread across the desk like a map of a war zone. I checked my gold Cartier watch. It was 4:15 a.m.
I had forty-six hours until the Blackwood foreclosure was legally executed. Forty-six hours to rewrite the ending of this tragedy.
I pulled out my phone and dialed a number that wasn’t saved in my contacts. It rang three times before a gruff, sleep-heavy voice answered.
“Do you have any idea what time it is, Sabrina?” **Elias Vance** grumbled. Elias was a former forensic accountant for the SEC who now operated in the grey areas of corporate warfare. He was expensive, ruthless, and entirely loyal to the highest bidder.
“I need you at my house in twenty minutes, Elias,” I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion. “Bring your encrypted servers. I have a forty-million-dollar offshore puzzle that needs to be rerouted by tomorrow morning.”
“Rerouted?” Elias paused, the sleep instantly vanishing from his voice. “Sabrina, if those funds are locked in Cayman shell accounts, we need authorization. We need the account holder’s biometric approval or a physical master key.”
I looked at the bloody smear on my Armani sleeve from where I had brushed against the ER curtain.
“The account holder is currently unconscious and heavily sedated in the surgical recovery ward at St. Jude’s,” I replied. “I will get you the biometric approval. You just find the backdoor.”
“This sounds highly illegal, Mrs. Rollins.”
“I’ll double your usual rate. Twenty minutes, Elias.” I hung up.
I walked to the adjoining master bathroom and turned on the cold water. I splashed my face, watching the water drip from my chin in the mirror. The woman staring back at me looked terrifying. The loving wife and the supportive sister were dead, murdered in the dark of this office.
It was time to bury the bodies.
