“To make me sign away thirty million dollars?”
“It was going back.”
I stared.
“You planned to steal money and return it?”
“We needed time.”
“Who is we?”
He looked toward Thomas.
Then Margaret.
Finally himself.
The truth was ugly because it was ordinary.
Debt.
Fear.
Greed.
Cowardice.
No grand criminal empire.
No mastermind worth romanticizing.
A bankrupt father.
A mother who protected him.
A son who married rich.
And all three gradually convincing themselves that stealing from me was survival.
The Mercer Star turned toward Bellmere before midnight.
By sunrise, investigators had the medical log.
The altered voyage authorization.
The missing medication inventory.
The audio from the salon.
The body-camera recording from my cabin.
The financial transfer attempt.
And the tablet Adrian had tried to make me authenticate.
The crew gave statements.
The nurse gave blood samples and inventory records.
The purser turned over communication logs showing attempts to divert my outgoing messages.
