Chapter 4 - The Midnight Audit
By the twelfth night, Callum refused to sleep. Utilizing his smartphone—which Mara had smuggled in against hospital policy—he began quietly transferring administrative access codes, reviewing encrypted server logs, and digging into the digital archives of Harte Construction. What he found made his blood run cold. The fraudulent inspection signatures weren't just his father’s; in recent years, his own chief operating officer, Marcus Vance—no relation to Elena, but a ruthless corporate shark appointed by their father—had continued the exact same criminal practices to secure upcoming state infrastructure bids.
At 2:00 a.m., the door to Callum’s room clicked open. It wasn't a routine check-in.
A tall silhouette slipped inside, closing the door softly. The overhead lights remained off, illuminated only by the pale glow of the city lights filtering through the rain-streaked window. It wasn't Elena.
It was Marcus Vance.
He wore an expensive, dry-cleaned Italian suit that looked absurdly out of place in a hospital ward. A cold, calculating smile played across his lips as he walked over to the side of Callum’s bed.
"I heard you had a little medical scare, Callum, but I didn't realize it came with corporate amnesia," Marcus said softly, pulling up a chair and sitting down. "The IT department flagged unusual administrative login activity from this room an hour ago. Looks like someone has been poking around the legacy structural audit folders."
Callum kept his breathing steady, resting his head against the pillow. "You’ve been signing off on falsified steel density reports for the new metro expansion, Marcus. Just like the old days."
Marcus didn't flinch. Instead, his smile widened, turning predatory. "Somebody has to keep the margins high, Cal. You've always been too obsessed with ethical safety standards to understand how real billionaires operate. Unfortunately, your little accident on Route 40 was supposed to be the end of your oversight permanently. The delivery truck driver was heavily compensated to make sure your pickup truck became a permanent metal tomb."
Callum’s muscles tensed beneath the hospital sheets. The truck crash hadn't been an accident at all. It had been an assassination attempt orchestrated by his own COO to take full control of the firm before Callum's upcoming internal audit exposed the fraud.
"You tried to kill me," Callum whispered.
"And I’m terribly annoyed it didn't take," Marcus replied smoothly, pulling a small, unlabelled syringe from his breast pocket. "Fortunately, a patient recovering from major trauma is awfully fragile. A sudden pulmonary embolism triggered by an accidental air bubble in the IV line happens every day in hospitals. Very tragic. Very clean."
Marcus reached out toward the IV port, his thumb hovering over the valve. Callum prepared to lunge forward despite his broken ribs and stitched femur—knowing it would likely tear his body apart—when the door flew open with a violent crash.
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Elena stood in the doorway, the harsh hallway light framing her rigid figure. In her hand, she held her heavy metal clipboard like a weapon.
"Step away from the bed, Marcus," Elena commanded, her voice ringing with absolute, terrifying authority.
