Chapter 6 - Unmasking the Monster
We set the trap with surgical precision.
Under Detective Vance’s supervision, we drafted an email from my personal, encrypted account directly to Daniel’s private address.
> *Daniel,*
>
> *The police are pressuring me to testify against you. They have the life insurance documents from Aegis Holdings. They showed me the four-million-dollar policy.*
>
> *I haven’t signed their formal sworn statement yet. I’m scared. I don’t want you to go to prison, but I know what you did to my pills. I know what was in the bathroom safe.*
>
> *If you transfer half of the money from the Cayman account to my personal trust and sign an uncontested divorce decree giving me the house, I will tell the DA that my statements at the house were caused by post-operative delirium and refuse to testify.*
>
> *Meet me tomorrow night at 8:00 PM at the old storage unit on 4th Street. Come alone, or I sign the detective’s affidavit on Wednesday morning.*
“He’ll never believe it’s that easy,” Rachel cautioned, watching over my shoulder.
“He will,” I said with absolute certainty. “Daniel believes every person on earth has a price. He believes I’m terrified of poverty, terrified of cancer, and desperate for his approval. He thinks I’m offering him a deal because I’m too weak to survive a public trial.”
Within twenty minutes, my inbox pinged.
> *I knew you’d come to your senses, Em. I never wanted to hurt you. Everything I did was to secure our financial future in case the worst happened. 8:00 PM tomorrow. Don’t bring your busybody nurse.*
Detective Vance smiled for the first time since I met him. “We have him on a wire.”
The next evening, the storage facility on 4th Street was cloaked in shadows. Fog rolled off the nearby river, wrapping the rusted corrugated metal buildings in a damp chill.
Inside Unit 114—a unit Daniel had rented under a fake name two years ago—the police had installed miniature high-definition pinhole cameras in the ceiling beams and audio transmitters along the support posts.
I sat in a wooden chair under the bare bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling. A bulletproof vest was strapped beneath my oversized winter coat. A tiny wire microphone was taped beneath the collar of my sweater.
Outside, in two unmarked surveillance vans parked around the perimeter, Detective Vance, a tactical entry team, and Rachel watched the live video feeds.
*“He’s pulling in,”* Vance’s voice crackled through the microscopic earpiece in my ear. *“Black Audi SUV. He’s alone. Emily, the moment he makes a verbal admission, say the code word: ‘Remission.’ We move in five seconds flat.”*
“Understood,” I whispered.
The heavy metal roller door of the storage unit rattled, then slid upward.
Daniel stepped inside.
He was dressed in an expensive camel-hair coat, his hair perfectly coiffed, his leather gloves pristine. He looked like a man arriving for a corporate dinner, not a clandestine extortion meeting.
He pulled the metal door down behind him until it latched with a heavy, final clatter.
“You look terrible, Emily,” were the first words out of his mouth.
“Good to see you too, Daniel,” I said, keeping my posture slumped, playing the role of the frail, beaten wife he expected.
He circled me slowly, his boots clicking against the concrete floor. “You caused quite a mess. Do you know my partners suspended my profit sharing pending this police inquiry? Do you know how humiliating it was to be escorted out of my own office by building security?”
“You forged my signature on a four-million-dollar policy, Daniel,” I said, looking up at him through lowered eyelashes. “You crushed clonidine and put it in my anti-nausea medication. You were trying to kill me.”
Daniel stopped directly in front of me. He laughed—a cold, humorless sound that echoed off the metal walls.
“Trying to kill you?” He bent down, leaning in until his breath hit my cheek. “I was doing you a favor, Emily. You were decaying in front of me. Do you have any idea how disgusting it was to watch you waste away? To clean up your vomit? To listen to you whimper in bed every night?”
“The doctors cured the cancer,” I whispered.
“Cured?” Daniel’s face twisted into an ugly, sneering snarl. “You were never going to be the same! You were broken goods. And in exchange for five years of my youth, what was I supposed to get? A mountain of medical debt and a withered wife? That four million dollars was my compensation for dealing with your pathetic illness.”
“And pressing on my wound?” I asked, my voice steady now. “Over the trash can? What was that?”
“A shortcut,” he whispered, his eyes wide and completely unhinged. “You were taking too long to die. The insurance adjuster was scheduled to review your file next month. If you went into full clinical remission, the policy would have lapsed without payout. I needed you to develop a fatal infection *now*.”
He reached into his coat pocket.
In the van, Vance’s team tensed.
Daniel pulled out a legal document and an uncapped fountain pen.
“Sign the affidavit recanting your testimony,” Daniel ordered, shoving the paper into my lap. “Sign it, and I’ll wire you fifty thousand dollars so you can go die quietly in a hospice clinic somewhere far away from me.”
I looked at the document. Then I looked up into the face of the man I had once loved, the man who had tried to systematically murder me in my own bed.
I smiled.
“What are you smiling at?” Daniel demanded, his eyes narrowing in sudden suspicion.
May you like
“I’m in remission, Daniel.”
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