Chapter 6 - The Dead Walk
The room seemed to spin.
Marcus stumbled back a step, gripping the edge of the bed for support. "David...?" he breathed, his face drained of all color. "No... no, David is dead. I identified his body. I buried him!"
On the video, Isabella answered the phone, her tone cold and transactional.
“It’s done, David,” Isabella’s voice recorded on the laptop said. “The potassium chloride is in her line. It will induce cardiac arrest within thirty minutes. The doctors will assume it was a pregnancy complication—eclampsia or an amniotic fluid embolism.”
“Good,” David’s voice replied over the speakerphone, distorted slightly by the cellular connection but unmistakable in its cadences. “Once Khloe and the baby are out of the picture, Marcus will be broken. He’ll sign the power of attorney over to you just like we planned. We’ll have full control of the Hale Enterprises offshore accounts by midnight.”
“What about Marcus?” Isabella asked on the screen, pacing near my bed. “Do we eliminate him too?”
“Not yet,” David answered cold-bloodedly. “Let him suffer first. Let him think his wife and child died because he wasn't here to save them. Then, when he’s at his weakest, we take the rest.”
I sat on the hospital bed, frozen in disbelief.
David hadn't died in that car crash. The crash had been staged. The body burned beyond recognition had been someone else. For three long years, Marcus had mourned his brother, carrying the guilt of his death, blaming himself for letting David drive that night—and all the while, David and Isabella had been orchestrating a slow, methodical destruction of our lives.
On the screen, the video continued.
At 2:35 PM, I began to wake up on the video, groaning, clutching my chest as the medication began to take effect, causing severe cramping and arrhythmia. I tried to reach for the call button, but Isabella slammed her hand down on the remote, pulling it out of my reach.
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I fell out of the bed, hitting the floor hard—which was when the IV line was pulled out of my arm, saved accidentally by the force of my fall before the full dose of the drug could enter my bloodstream.
Panicking because I was still conscious, Isabella had stepped on me to keep me pinned while searching her bag for another weapon—right before Marcus walked through the door.
