Chapter 6 - The Missing Person
The champagne glass slipped from my fingers and shattered against the concrete floor.
I stared at Silas, completely unable to process what he had just said.
I asked him how my father could possibly be arrested for my murder when I was standing right in front of him.
Silas quickly opened his laptop and hacked into the federal police database.
He pulled up the official arrest warrant and turned the screen toward me.
My mother and Madison had filed a missing person report exactly two weeks after I left.
But they had not simply reported me missing.
They had handed the police a forged, incredibly disturbing suicide note claiming I was ending my life because of my father's severe physical abuse.
They had also provided the police with a blood-stained shirt they claimed belonged to me.
I backed away from the screen, my mind spinning violently out of control.
My mother and sister had manufactured a fake murder investigation to frame my father.
I asked Silas why they would do something so insane and horrific to their own husband and father.
Silas rapidly cross-referenced my mother's financial records.
He discovered a massive, ten-million-dollar life insurance policy taken out on my father just three months ago.
My mother and Madison did not just want to get rid of my father.
They needed him to go to prison for life so they could declare him legally dead and collect the massive payout to cover their cartel debts.
They had sacrificed me first, and when that was not enough, they sacrificed him.
I felt physically sick to my stomach.
My mother had always been selfish, but I had never realized she was capable of calculated, cold-blooded conspiracy.
If I walked into a police station right now to prove I was alive, my father would be freed.
But if I revealed myself, the cartel would instantly know where to find me and collect the two million dollars I supposedly owed them.
I was trapped between letting an innocent man rot in prison, or stepping back into the crosshairs of ruthless killers.
I looked at Silas, desperate for a legal loophole to navigate the nightmare.
Silas told me there was only one way to destroy my mother's plan without exposing myself.
We had to break into my mother's house and steal the original life insurance policy to prove insurance fraud.
I agreed to the dangerous plan, packing a bag with tactical gear provided by Silas.
We drove through the night, arriving at my childhood home just past midnight.
The house was completely dark.
I picked the lock on the back door and crept into the silent kitchen.
I moved quietly toward my father's home office to search the files.
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Suddenly, the kitchen lights blazed on, blinding me entirely.
Madison was sitting at the kitchen table, holding a loaded handgun aimed directly at my chest.
