Chapter 4 - The Paper Trail of Blood-4
The air outside the estate was crisp and cool, carrying the faint, sharp scent of pine and damp earth from the autumn woods bordering the driveway.
I placed Oliver safely in the back seat of my SUV, buckling his seatbelt with steady hands and handing him his tablet with his favorite animated movie queued up. I kissed his forehead, closed the door, and turned to face Arthur Pendelton, who was waiting beside his sedan with a thick red folder in his hands.
“The deputies are ensuring they clear the driveway, Natalie,” Arthur said, his expression unusually grave as he looked back toward the house. “Dean and his father are attempting to secure a temporary stay from a county judge, but with the federal freeze order active, no local magistrate will touch this file.”
“What about the cardboard box Walter was carrying?” I asked, leaning against the side of my vehicle. “The one he took from my office?”
Arthur opened the red folder and pulled out a stack of high-resolution photographic scans. “Our investigator took digital captures of every document inside that box before the deputies sealed it as evidence. Natalie... you need to see this.”
I took the pages from his hand.
The first few sheets were familiar—scans of my late father’s estate tax filings from seven years ago. But as I flipped through the pages, my eyes caught a series of confidential internal memos bearing the letterhead of Miller Health Logistics—the medical supply distribution company my father, Marcus Miller, had owned before his sudden death.
Attached to the back of the memos was a private coroner’s secondary toxicology screening dated six weeks after my father’s funeral.
My breath caught in my throat.
“Arthur...” my voice trembled slightly for the first time all morning. “My father died of an acute cardiac arrest in his sleep. That was the official cause of death.”
“Read the second page, Natalie,” Arthur whispered softly.
I turned the sheet.
Sample Analysis: Post-mortem tissue evaluation indicates trace presence of synthetic digitalis glycoside derivative. Compound unlisted in primary hospital screening protocols. High probability of induced lethal myocardial arrhythmia.
Below the technical report was a handwritten note on private stationer paper—paper bearing the distinctive crest of the Prescott family estate in Pinehurst.
The handwriting was Walter Prescott’s.
“The acquisition of Miller Logistics must clear before the Q3 regulatory audit. Marcus refuses the buyout offer. If the estate transfers to the daughter under the sovereign trust, the land rights in Vance County will be locked for thirty years. Proceed with the secondary protocol.”
The world around me seemed to tilt on its axis. The quiet rustle of the autumn leaves, the distant hum of the highway, the flashing lights of the sheriff's cruisers—all of it faded into a cold, terrifying white noise.
My father hadn't died of natural causes.
Seven years ago, when Marcus Miller suddenly passed away in his sleep at the age of fifty-eight, I was twenty-four years old and devastated by grief. Dean had been there to comfort me. His father, Walter Prescott, an established regional business consultant, had stepped in to "help" me navigate the liquidation of my father’s corporate assets.
They had convinced me to sell the operational divisions of Miller Health Logistics to a regional healthcare conglomerate—the very conglomerate I ended up working for years later as an acquisitions manager.
And now, looking at the yellowed paper in my trembling hands, the horrific truth stood fully unmasked.
Dean hadn't met me by chance at that charity gala eight years ago. His family hadn't welcomed me into their lives out of warmth or love. They had systematically targeted my father’s business, murdered Marcus Miller to prevent him from blocking their land speculation deal, and then married Dean to me to ensure the remaining trust capital remained under their indirect control.
I looked up at the grand brick house—the home I had lived in for a decade, the home where I had raised my son, cooked family dinners, and believed I was building a life with a man who loved me.
It wasn't a home. It was a crime scene.
“Natalie?” Arthur asked gently, reaching out a hand to steady me. “Are you alright?”
May you like
I drew a long, deep breath of the freezing morning air, letting the cold oxygen burn through the shock in my lungs, replacing the pain with an absolute, unyielding, nuclear rage.
“I am completely fine, Arthur,” I said, my voice dropping into a register so cold it surprised even myself. “Call the State Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Homicide Division. Tell them we are reopening the investigation into the death of Marcus Miller.”
