Chapter 5 - The Ultimate Betrayal
I stared at the glossy photographs, the sterile air of the bank vault suddenly feeling suffocatingly thin.
Brooke Ellis, the ambitious, loyal mistress who was supposedly helping Richard steal my life, was secretly meeting with the billionaire investor he was desperately trying to court.
In the photographs, they were not sitting in a boardroom.
They were huddled closely in a dark corner of a high-end cocktail bar, exchanging thick, unmarked envelopes.
I flipped the pictures over, my heart pounding aggressively against my ribs.
On the back of the final photograph, Richard had scrawled a frantic note in his messy handwriting.
Brooke is a corporate spy. She works for Han. They are trying to sabotage the portfolio deal to force a hostile takeover of my firm. If I die, take these to the FBI.
My mind raced, trying to process the impossible layers of deception.
Richard hadn't locked this box under my name to frame me.
He had locked it under my name because he knew Brooke couldn't legally access it without me.
It was a desperate failsafe to protect his company from the woman he thought he loved.
I shoved the photographs back into the manila envelope and quickly locked the box.
I walked out of the vault, expecting to find Brooke screaming at the security guards.
The lobby was completely empty.
Brooke had vanished.
I hurried out onto the busy Boston street, frantically searching for her black town car.
It was gone.
My phone suddenly vibrated aggressively in my pocket.
It was a call from the cardiac ICU at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"Mrs. Halston, this is Dr. Aris," the surgeon's voice said, sounding incredibly tense.
"You need to get back to the hospital immediately."
"Did Richard wake up?" I asked, hailing a passing taxi.
"No, Margaret," the doctor replied grimly.
"He went into sudden cardiac arrest ten minutes ago."
"We tried to revive him, but his heart completely failed."
"I am so sorry, but your husband is dead."
I dropped the phone onto the floorboard of the taxi, completely paralyzed by shock.
Richard was dead.
The man I had spent thirty-one years loving, hating, and surviving was gone in an instant.
I arrived at the hospital twenty minutes later in a complete daze.
Dr. Aris met me in the hallway outside the ICU, his face pale and deeply concerned.
"What happened?" I whispered, my voice barely audible.
"He was completely stable last night."
The surgeon looked around nervously before pulling me into a private consultation room.
"He was stable, Margaret," the doctor confirmed quietly.
"But his blood work just came back from the crash cart."
"He didn't die of a natural heart attack."
"Someone injected a massive, lethal dose of potassium directly into his IV line."
My blood turned to absolute ice.
"He was murdered?" I gasped.
Dr. Aris nodded slowly.
"I have already called the police, and they are pulling the security footage from the hallway."
Before I could even process the horrifying reality, two Boston homicide detectives pushed open the door to the consultation room.
They did not look sympathetic.
They looked directly at me.
"Margaret Halston?" the lead detective asked, holding up a pair of handcuffs.
"Yes," I answered, my heart hammering violently.
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"You are under arrest for the murder of Richard Halston," the detective stated coldly.
"We have security footage of you entering his room exactly five minutes before his heart stopped."
