Chapter 7 - The Digital Ghost
Davina stared at the small silver drive in Juny's hand with wide, panicked eyes.
"What is on that thing?" Davina demanded, stepping aggressively toward my injured daughter.
I immediately lunged across the room, shoving my sister hard against the bedroom wall.
"Do not ever come near my child again," I roared, standing firmly between them.
I grabbed the USB drive from Juny's trembling hand and quickly locked the bedroom door.
There was a sleek laptop sitting on the antique desk in the corner of the room.
I booted it up instantly, plugging the silver drive into the side port with shaking hands.
A single video file popped up on the screen, titled simply, "The Truth."
I clicked play, and Grandma Augusta's familiar, comforting face suddenly filled the monitor.
"If you are watching this, my sweet Juny, it means Eleanor and Davina are trying to steal your future," Augusta said in the recording.
Tears welled in my eyes hearing her gentle, loving voice again.
Augusta looked directly into the camera, her expression shifting to one of absolute, furious authority.
"The trust cannot be broken, but I knew they would try to forge documents or destroy the physical copies."
She held up a massive stack of banking ledgers and corporate tax returns.
"This drive contains undeniable proof of Holt's embezzlement and Eleanor's tax fraud spanning over a decade."
Augusta had spent her final years quietly investigating every single one of their financial crimes.
"If they challenge the trust, these files will automatically be sent to the FBI," Augusta declared firmly.
Davina sank onto the edge of the bed, her face completely drained of all color as the video played.
She knew the evidence on this drive would send both her husband and her mother to federal prison for years.
Suddenly, a massive, deafening crash echoed from the living room directly below us.
Someone had just smashed the glass patio door, and multiple heavy footsteps were rushing into the house.
May you like
"They are out of time!" a terrifying, unfamiliar voice bellowed from the bottom of the stairs.
Holt's violent lenders had just brought heavily armed reinforcements into the home.
