Chapter 14 - The Missing Phone
I remembered the phone immediately.
Three days before I left for Singapore, it disappeared.
Dominic told me I must have packed it accidentally.
I replaced it.
Changed the password.
Assumed everything was safe.
I was wrong.
The device had contained an older authentication certificate for Sterling Meridian.
Not enough to move money directly.
Enough to access archived corporate systems.
Brooke had stolen it.
Leo remembered seeing her with it in the basement.
Police searched Brooke’s apartment.
Nothing.
Her office.
Nothing.
Then Aaron called.
“Check Liam’s toy box.”
Investigators found the phone hidden inside the battery compartment of an electronic train set.
Brooke had kept it close to Liam because nobody searched a child’s toys.
The device still worked.
Forensic recovery revealed deleted messages.
One conversation existed between Brooke and Victoria.
VICTORIA:
Clara lands December 18.
BROOKE:
Dominic said December 24.
VICTORIA:
She changed the ticket.
BROOKE:
Then we need Leo gone before she arrives.
My heart stopped.
Eleanor kept reading.
BROOKE:
Waverly can take him on the 21st.
VICTORIA:
Too late.
BROOKE:
Then make Clara delay again.
VICTORIA:
How?
BROOKE:
Singapore customs problem.
I knew exactly what happened.
December 17, our final shipment was suddenly held by customs over incorrect documentation.
I spent four days fixing it.
My return moved from the eighteenth to Christmas Eve.
That delay was engineered.
They had intended Leo to be gone before I arrived.
But Waverly demanded additional documentation.
The placement failed.
That was the only reason I found him at home.
My knees felt weak.
One administrative form had kept my child from disappearing into a residential facility before I could see him.
The recovered phone contained something else.
An audio recording.
Dominic.
Victoria.
Brooke.
Recorded accidentally when Brooke activated voice memo.
Dominic sounded angry.
“I said stop pushing him.”
Victoria answered.
“He needs discipline.”
Brooke laughed.
“If Clara saw him now, she’d kill all of us.”
Then Dominic said the sentence that destroyed any remaining lie that he had not understood.
“That’s why she can’t see him.”
Silence followed.
I replayed it.
Again.
And again.
He knew.
Not everything.
But enough.
The civil agreement we had discussed was finished.
Eleanor looked at me.
“One false statement voided it.”
Dominic had testified that he never participated in hiding Leo’s condition.
The recording proved otherwise.
I called him myself.
When he answered, I played the audio.
He did not speak for almost a minute.
Then whispered.
“I can explain.”
May you like
“No.”
“You can explain it to the judge.”
