Chapter 14 - Voices from Dorchester
The payphone outside the trauma clinic in Boston chimed three times before the connection clicked through.
"Emma?"
Sloane’s voice sounded exhausted, thinned out by sixty-hour shifts in an underfunded municipal ER.
"Sloane, it’s me. Are you somewhere safe?"
"I’m in the breakroom. It’s midnight here. What happened? My father left me three frantic voicemails today."
I leaned against the glass partition of my private office, watching the Chicago fog roll over the lake.
"Daniel filed against me through a dummy corporation. Vancorp Bio-Therapeutics."
The line went dead silent for five agonizing seconds.
"Sloane? Are you still there?"
"Emma... get out of that office right now," Sloane whispered, her voice laced with sheer terror.
"What are you talking about?"
"Vancorp isn't a dummy corporation," Sloane said, speaking rapidly under her breath.
"When I was still living in Daniel’s penthouse, I found a set of offshore bank transfers stashed in his safe behind the master closet."
"I thought he was just hiding money from you for our wedding."
"What were the transfers for?"
"They weren't payments to him, Emma," Sloane cried softly.
"He was paying *them*."
"He was paying someone inside the hospital to alter the surgical mortality records."
My skin prickled with ice.
"Who was he paying, Sloane?"
"I didn't recognize the account number," she said, her voice catching in her throat.
"All I know is the routing code originated from the Chicago Memorial Foundation’s offshore trust."
"The trust controlled by the hospital’s executive committee."
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"Someone on our own board helped Daniel fake the clinical trials, Emma."
"And whoever it is, they’re still sitting in that building with you right now."
