Chapter 3 - The Decoy
Olivia stared at the smoking barrel of the handgun with absolute horror.
Her mother was lying unconscious on the floor, bleeding from a deep cut on her forehead.
She had absolutely no one left to protect her.
She slowly reached out her trembling hand and dropped the digital recorder onto the bedsheets.
Ethan snatched it up with a triumphant, malicious smirk.
He placed the device on the floor and crushed it violently beneath the heel of his boot.
"Your brilliant little plan is completely ruined, Olivia," Ethan sneered.
Diane breathed a massive sigh of relief and quickly began gathering her belongings.
"We need to pack our bags and leave the country tonight," Diane suggested nervously.
Ethan shook his head, looking down at his unconscious mother-in-law.
"We are not running away from our own massive fortune."
"We just need to make sure Olivia doesn't survive childbirth."
A sharp, agonizing pain suddenly ripped through Olivia's lower abdomen.
She gasped loudly, clutching her stomach as a massive contraction paralyzed her body.
The stress and the violence had triggered premature labor.
Ethan smiled cruelly, watching his wife writhe in absolute agony on the bed.
"It looks like nature is going to solve our problem for us," he laughed.
He told his mother to go down to the kitchen and grab a length of heavy rope to tie Margaret up.
Diane nodded and hurried out of the bedroom, leaving Ethan alone with his suffering wife.
Olivia looked at the shattered pieces of the digital recorder on the floor.
She forced a weak, painful smile through her tears.
"You really think I would keep the real evidence in my own bed?" Olivia whispered.
Ethan frowned, his arrogant expression faltering for a fraction of a second.
"What are you talking about?"
"That was an old mp3 player," Olivia revealed, gasping through another contraction.
"The real recorder automatically uploaded the audio files to a secure cloud server ten minutes ago."
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Ethan's face turned stark white as the reality of her words crashed down on him.
Before he could react, the heavy oak door of the bedroom slammed violently shut behind him.
