Chapter 15 - The Stolen Bracelet’s Secret
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On the screen in my office, Sophia put on the performance of her life while her accomplice finished cloning Adrian’s biometric keycard three feet behind his back.
"What are you talking about, Adrian?!" Sophia sobbed, clutching the hospital bedsheet to her chest with trembling fingers. "I swear on my mother’s grave, I never touched the stones on that bracelet! If the emerald is fake, then Claire must have swapped it out herself this morning so she could frame me and steal your grandmother’s shares!"
Even through the hidden camera lens, I saw Adrian stiffen.
Ten days ago—maybe even twenty-four hours ago—that poison might have planted a seed of doubt in his mind. Today, after watching his father slap him and hearing Henrik Laurent’s certified letter read aloud, Adrian’s expression turned to pure granite.
"Say my wife’s name like that one more time, Sophia," Adrian said, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper as he leaned over the bedrail, "and hospital security won't be able to put you back together."
He reached down and yanked the plastic IV tubing straight out of the tape on her arm—revealing that there wasn't even a needle attached to her skin, just an empty plastic catheter taped over unbroken flesh.
Sophia gasped, pulling her arm back as the fake doctor by the armchair quickly slipped the titanium card back into Adrian’s wet overcoat and bolted out the hallway door.
"There’s no needle in your arm, and there’s no saline in that bag," Adrian said slowly, staring down at the woman he had ruined his marriage to protect as the last shred of his ten-year illusion turned to ash before his eyes. "You faked a ruptured spleen to get me down here."
Before Sophia could invent another lie, Adrian snatched his wet overcoat off the chair and walked out of the room without looking back—never realizing that while he had caught the fake IV, he had already handed Julian Cross’s syndicate a full digital clone of his master security clearance for Friday night’s Founders’ Ball.
Down in the hospital stairwell, my two operatives let the fake doctor walk right out to his waiting sedan, photographed him handing the cloned transceiver to Julian Cross’s chief lieutenant, and followed them all the way back to Cross’s warehouse on the South Branch of the river.
The next morning, while Adrian was desperately trying to buy back the original three-carat Colombian emerald from the Wabash Avenue broker for half a million dollars to surprise me, Dante Vance walked into my office carrying a velvet box.
"We got there four hours before Mr. Moretti’s people, ma'am," Dante said, opening the box to reveal the genuine, flawed, breathtaking three-carat Muzo emerald that had belonged to Eleanor Moretti since 1928. "Since the broker knowingly purchased stolen family trust property from Sophia Reynolds without a title certificate, he was very eager to surrender the stone to our legal team in exchange for staying out of federal prison."
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I picked up the genuine emerald between my thumb and forefinger, holding it up to the morning sunlight.
"Keep the synthetic glass stone in the bracelet that Adrian’s lawyers are demanding to inspect tomorrow, Dante," I instructed calmly. "And let Julian Cross and Sophia believe their cloned keycard for Friday night’s Founders’ Ball is still active. If Sophia wants to walk into a Moretti ballroom one last time wearing champagne silk, let’s make sure the whole city is watching when the lights come on."
