Chapter 5 - The Stolen Signature
Thomas climbed a rusted fire escape with practiced, silent agility, slipping through a cracked upper pane into the warehouse rafters. Below him, the concrete floor was illuminated by a single industrial work light suspended above a dusty wooden folding table.
Fiona was seated on a folding metal chair, her little boots barely touching the floor. Tears were streaming down her pale cheeks.
On the table lay a stack of thick legal documents and an electronic biometric fingerprint scanner.
"I won't sign it!" Fiona sobbed, pulling her hands into her sleeves. "Daddy said I should never press my thumb on anything without him!"
Wendy grabbed Fiona’s wrist and slammed it down against the cold wood. Her vintage pink dress was immaculate, but her face was twisted into a grotesque sneer of malice.
"Listen to me, you ungrateful little brat," Wendy hissed, leaning down until her nose was inches from Fiona’s face. "Your father doesn't care about you. He cares about his meetings and his money! If you don't press your thumb onto this scanner right now, Marcus will make sure your mother never wakes up."
In the rafters, Thomas felt the world tilt on its axis.
*Clara never wakes up?*
Marcus leaned against the table, lighting a cigarette. "Hurry it up, Wendy. The offshore account in the Caymans is set up. The moment this biometric trust release clears Fiona’s maternal inheritance into my shell company, we both walk away with twenty-five million each. The medical clinic in Mexico is demanding their monthly hush money anyway. Keeping Clara in a medically induced coma for two years isn't cheap."
Thomas’s vision flashed red.
*Clara wasn't dead.*
She had never died in that ravine! Wendy and Marcus had orchestrated the crash, stolen Clara’s body from the wreckage, faked her cremation with fraudulent coroner documents, and had been keeping Clara comatose in an underground Mexican clinic just to keep Thomas from remarrying while they worked to bypass Fiona’s trust fund locks!
They had used Fiona’s love for her mother as a psychological weapon, whispering horrors into a seven-year-old child's ear to keep her compliant.
Below, Marcus grabbed Fiona’s thumb, forcing it toward the glowing blue glass of the biometric scanner.
"Press it, kid, or your mommy stops breathing tonight," Marcus snarled.
Fiona let out a bloodcurdling scream of pure terror.
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👉 How would Thomas stop them before Fiona's future—and Clara's life—were destroyed forever?
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