Part 2: The Red Lining
Part 2: The Red Lining
When I woke up, the blinding white lights of the hospital ceiling made my head throb.
The steady, mechanical click-beep of a fetal heart monitor was the first sound that anchored me back to reality. I frantically looked down at my stomach, gasping for air.
"They're okay, Maya. They're okay," Daniel's voice was cracked, rough with emotion.
He was sitting in a chair beside the bed, still in his uniform pants, but his jacket was thrown over the back of the seat. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hands trembling as he tightly held my right hand.
"The doctors stopped the premature labor," he whispered, kissing the back of my knuckles. "The twins are stable. But you almost lost them."
"Vanessa..." I managed to say, my throat feeling dry as desert sand. "The money, Daniel. She had a forged withdrawal form for the one hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
Daniel's face hardened, a cold, dangerous expression overtaking his features. "She didn't just have a form, Maya. She had our mother's legal power of attorney attached to it."
I tried to sit up, but the monitors chimed, warning me to stay still. "Carol? Carol was in on it?"
"When I arrived at the house, Vanessa was alone with you," Daniel said, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "But my security team intercepted my mother at the Albuquerque airport two hours ago. She had a one-way ticket to Miami and a suitcase filled with the corporate audit papers from my firm's secondary account."
As a former forensic accountant, the word audit instantly cleared the fog from my brain.
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"She wasn't just trying to steal the trust money for Vanessa's boutique," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "She was trying to cover up a shortfall in the family construction company."
"Exactly," Daniel said, leaning his head against my hand. "While I was in Singapore, my mother transferred eighty thousand dollars out of our payroll account to pay off her personal gambling debts. She needed the kids' trust money to replace it before the quarterly tax inspectors arrived tomorrow morning."
