Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN IN THE GARAGE
Arthur recovered garage footage from the night I discovered Matthew’s affair.
At 4:21 a.m., Matthew’s car entered our building.
Lauren sat in the passenger seat.
The baby was in the back.
That explained the blue sock.
The car alarm began sounding after Matthew carried the child upstairs to a private guest apartment owned by NexusCore.
He had brought his hidden family into our building while I slept above them.
At 4:36, I accessed the garage cameras.
At 4:40, Matthew received an alert that someone had viewed the footage.
He came upstairs furious.
The beating was not only an attempt to impress Lauren.
It was an attempt to terrify me before I understood what I had seen.
Lauren had followed him into the penthouse using a service elevator.
A hallway camera captured her standing outside our door.
She listened while he struck me.
She left before he finished.
Detective Ortiz showed me the recording.
Lauren’s face remained calm.
At the twelfth strike, she checked her phone.
At the eighteenth, she smiled.
She had been there.
She had encouraged him.
Her attorney claimed she believed the sounds came from broken furniture.
The camera audio captured her whispering through the door.
“Make sure she understands.”
Lauren was arrested the following afternoon for conspiracy, evidence tampering, and her role in the assault.
She surrendered in a designer coat.
Reporters surrounded the police entrance.
She said nothing.
Matthew disappeared.
His ankle-monitor request had not yet been approved because no arrest warrant existed at the time he fled.
His phone was found near the George Washington Bridge.
His passport remained in the penthouse safe.
He had access to private aircraft and false corporate travel records.
The board feared he might use company funds to escape.
Then a transfer request appeared.
Twenty-four million dollars.
Destination: a Cayman Islands account.
The request used an emergency authorization protocol created years earlier.
Only three people possessed the code.
Matthew.
The chief financial officer.
And me.
The system recorded my credentials.
I was in the hospital when the transfer began.
Someone wanted the theft to look like my retaliation.
The forensic team stopped the payment.
They traced the log-in to a NexusCore disaster-recovery center in New Jersey.
Security officers found the building empty.
A single laptop remained active.
On the desk beside it was a photograph of my father leaving the hospital.
A red circle had been drawn around his car.
May you like
Matthew was no longer only running.
He was watching us.
