Chapter 5 - The Ultimate Frame-Up
Skylar froze completely, her mind struggling to process the bizarre and terrifying scene playing out under the harsh spotlight.
Suzanne was weeping hysterically, struggling against the heavy ropes tying her wrists and ankles to the metal chair.
Derek had brutally beaten his own flesh and blood and was now holding her hostage in a rusted shipping container.
Skylar yelled over the pouring rain, demanding to know what kind of sick, twisted game he was trying to play.
Derek simply smiled, wiping a drop of rainwater from his expensive designer jacket as if he were entirely unbothered by the chaos.
He explained that his criminal employers were incredibly furious about the frozen bank accounts and the missing laundered money.
They had demanded a scapegoat to take the fall for the massive financial hemorrhage that Skylar had inadvertently caused.
Derek proudly revealed that he had officially transferred all of the illegal offshore accounts into Suzanne’s name earlier that afternoon.
He was framing his own sister for the entire money-laundering operation to save his own miserable skin from the cartel.
But the police would never believe that Suzanne had masterminded the fraud without a convincing, violent motive.
Derek pointed the heavy steel crowbar directly at Skylar, his eyes burning with absolute, uncompromising malice.
He stated that the police were currently on their way to this exact location after receiving an anonymous tip about a kidnapping.
When the authorities arrived, they would find Suzanne beaten nearly to death, and they would find Skylar standing over her with the weapon.
He planned to kill Skylar, place the crowbar in her dead hands, and claim he had arrived just in time to stop a jealous, psychotic wife.
It was a perfectly orchestrated double-frame that would eliminate his angry wife and his greedy sister in a single, bloody night.
Derek lunged forward with terrifying speed, swinging the heavy metal bar violently toward Skylar’s unprotected head.
She barely managed to duck, feeling the rush of air as the lethal weapon missed her skull by a fraction of an inch.
Skylar rolled across the wet concrete, ignoring the searing agony in her burned cheek and her twisted ankle.
She pulled the high-voltage stun gun from her purse and aimed it directly at Derek’s chest as he prepared to swing again.
Before she could pull the trigger, a deafening gunshot echoed through the shipyard, shattering the tense silence.
Derek screamed in sudden agony, dropping the crowbar as a blossoming red stain quickly spread across his right shoulder.
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Skylar turned around in shock to see who had fired the shot from the dark shadows of the shipping containers.
Standing in the pouring rain with a smoking pistol in his hand was the man from the hotel who had tried to kill her earlier.
