Chapter 2 - The Decoy Signature
I quickly dropped the pen and turned around, feigning a sudden coughing fit.
Celeste froze, lowering the heavy candlestick just an inch.
I gasped for air and told them my throat was incredibly dry from the wedding champagne.
Adrian immediately stepped between us, taking the bronze candlestick from Celeste’s hand with a forced laugh.
He told his supposed mother that she did not need to pack the hotel decorations.
Celeste’s eyes burned into mine, but she finally backed away and went to the bathroom.
I knew I had to sign something, or they would never let me leave this room alive.
I picked up the silver pen and signed the documents using a specific, non-binding alias signature I used for security testing at work.
It looked exactly like my real signature, but any bank would flag it as legally invalid immediately.
Adrian eagerly snatched the papers from the desk, his eyes gleaming with barely concealed greed.
He carefully placed them into his leather briefcase and locked it with a numeric code.
I memorized the movement of his fingers as he rolled the tumblers.
The code was his real birth year, the one I had just learned at the fraud office.
We rode the elevator down to the lobby in total silence.
The shuttle took us to the airport, and I pretended to sleep the entire way.
When we finally arrived at the secluded beach house in the Bahamas, I waited until they were busy unpacking in the master bedroom.
I slipped into the home office and found a hidden wall safe behind a painting of a sailboat.
I punched in the birth year code, and the heavy metal door clicked open.
Inside, there was a stack of life insurance policies taken out in my name.
The payout amounts totaled over ten million dollars, but that was not the worst part.
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Sitting beneath the policies was a printed death certificate.
It was perfectly forged, it had my name on it, and the date of death was listed as tomorrow.
