Chapter 5 - The Recorded Phone Call
The satellite phone connected on the third ring.
“Mariana?!” Ryan’s voice burst through the speaker, breathless, erratic, and edged with sharp, panicked anger. “Where the hell are you?! What did your father do to my security team?!”
I pressed the record button on the laptop screen, routing the audio through an encrypted voice-logging portal that automatically burned the file onto three separate cloud drives.
“I’m at a safe place, Ryan,” I said, keeping my voice surprisingly calm, almost flat. “Leo is resting.”
“Bring him home immediately, Mariana!” Ryan demanded, his voice echoing as if he were pacing inside a high-ceilinged room—likely Beatrice’s penthouse in Bel-Air. “You’re acting hysterically! You took him out of the hotel without his medical gear! My mother is sick with worry!”
“Is she?” I asked softly. “Is she worried about Leo, Ryan? Or is she worried about the $1.7 million transfer to Apex Biometrics that failed to clear its third stage at nine o'clock tonight?”
Silence.
Total, absolute, suffocating silence descended on the line.
I could hear the faint sound of Ryan’s shallow breathing, followed by a muffled background whisper—Beatrice’s sharp, commanding voice in the background: “Ask her what she knows!”
“I don't know what you’re talking about,” Ryan said, though his voice had lost its aggressive edge, replaced by a thin, trembling hesitation. “What $1.7 million?”
“Apex Biometrics,” I repeated, reading directly from the Zurich server document. “Dr. Hans Richter. The NM-402 neurotoxin injected into the lymph node behind Leo’s right ear. The live camera feed above the headboard in Suite 402.”
I paused, letting every single word sink into his chest like a lead sinker.
“I have the blood work, Ryan. I have the tox screen certified by Dr. Evelyn Reed. I have the Zurich IP logs showing your father’s law firm paying the earnest deposit for Leo’s incapacitation.”
On the other end of the line, I heard a quiet gasp, followed by the sound of a glass breaking on a tile floor.
“Mariana...” Ryan breathed, his voice dropping into a desperate, pathetic whine. “Listen to me... you don't understand the pressure I was under. My company... they were going to put me in federal prison, Mariana! Aetheria’s board discovered the missing funds from the Asian division! I had no choice!”
“You had no choice but to poison your own son?” I asked, tears burning behind my eyelids, though my voice remained hard as flint. “You let your mother put a syringe to your baby’s neck so you wouldn't have to wear an ankle monitor?”
“He wasn't going to die!” Ryan yelled defensively, his panic boiling over. “Richter promised me! He said the compound only causes temporary motor-neuron paralysis! He said Leo wouldn't feel a thing! We were going to put him in a top facility in Switzerland! He would have lived comfortably, Mariana! Better than we ever could!”
“You traded your child’s life for a corporate bailout,” I said, every word dripping with pure disgust.
“Mariana, listen to me!” Ryan pleaded, his tone shifting into frantic negotiation. “We can fix this! Where are you? Tell me what you want! I can give you half the trust! One hundred million dollars, Mariana! You and Leo can go anywhere in the world! Just give me the flash drive with the tox report! Don't give it to your father!”
I looked down at the laptop screen. The recording indicator was glowing bright green, capturing every single word, every confession, every admission of guilt in crystal-clear digital audio.
“I don't want your money, Ryan,” I whispered into the phone.
“Then what do you want?!” he screamed.
“I want you to tell your mother to check her front door,” I said.
I hung up the phone before he could answer.
Dad looked at me from the driver’s seat, a quiet smile of utter pride illuminating his face. “Audio file captured?”
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“Captured, encrypted, and sent to the Special Investigations Division of the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles,” I said, leaning back against the headrest as the car turned into the driveway of our mountain cabin.
“Now,” Dad said, pulling the sedan to a stop beneath the dark pines, “we prepare for the final scene.”
