Chapter 11 - The Diner Meeting
|
The diner on the outskirts of the city was empty, smelling of stale coffee and old grease. Mauricio slid into a cracked vinyl booth in the far corner, keeping his back to the wall.
A moment later, Thomas, the private investigator, walked through the glass doors. He looked exhausted. He slid a thick, unmarked Manila folder across the sticky table before he even sat down.
"You're paying me double for this, Jacobs," Thomas said, signaling the waitress for a coffee without looking at her. "Because if your old man finds out I dug this up, he's going to have my legs broken."
"What did you find, Thomas?" Mauricio asked, ignoring the folder for a moment.
"I went back to the hospital where Camilla Vance died," Thomas explained, his voice low. "The official report says accidental overdose. But I managed to track down the nurse who was on duty in the ICU that night. She retired suddenly a month after Camilla died and moved to a gated community in Florida."
Mauricio opened the folder. Inside were several grainy, photocopied bank statements.
"I ran her finances," Thomas continued. "Two days after Camilla died, a shell corporation linked directly to Jacobs Enterprises deposited half a million dollars into an offshore account owned by that nurse."
Mauricio stared at the numbers, his stomach churning with sickening realization. "My father paid her off."
"He didn't just pay her off to keep quiet," Thomas said grimly, leaning over the table. "I flew down to Florida yesterday. I cornered her in a grocery store parking lot. I told her the feds were reopening the case. She panicked."
Thomas pulled a small, digital audio recorder from his coat pocket and placed it on the table. He hit play.
A woman's voice, shaking with decades of buried guilt, crackled through the small speaker.
“He told me to increase the morphine drip! He said she was in pain, that the doctor authorized it! But when her heart stopped, he was standing right there. Arthur Jacobs. He just watched the monitors go flat. He didn't even call for help. He just reached into her bag, took some papers, and walked out of the room.”
Mauricio stopped breathing. He stared at the small black recorder as if it were a venomous snake.
His father hadn't just stolen a fortune. He hadn't just manipulated an adoption.
Arthur Jacobs was a murderer.
"He killed her," Mauricio whispered, the horrific truth finally breaking over him. "He killed Renata's mother to seize control of the trust."
"And he took the original trust documents from her hospital room," Thomas confirmed, pocketing the recorder. "Without those documents, Camilla couldn't prove the trust existed. Arthur buried the paperwork, orchestrated your adoption, and kept the kid close until he figured out how to legally bypass the guardianship laws."
Mauricio closed the folder, his hands remarkably steady despite the hurricane of rage tearing through his chest.
"Send this audio file to my lawyer immediately," Mauricio commanded. "And send a copy to the FBI field office in Chicago."
May you like
Thomas raised an eyebrow. "You sure about this, kid? This is going to send your own father to federal prison for the rest of his life."
"He stopped being my father the day he made my daughter cry," Mauricio said coldly. He slid out of the booth, leaving a hundred-dollar bill on the table. "Burn his empire to the ground."
