جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 10

"And now, please welcome this year's Employee of the Year: Skye Kiersey!"Desmond Ackman's voice blasted through the speakers, sharp enough to make my ears ring.I opened my eyes. On the LED screen ahead, a line of text glowed: Employee of the Year Award Bonus: 10,000,000 dollars.Ten million dollars. I stared at that string of zeros and felt a shiver run through me.I had been reborn. I was back at the very beginning of all this.In my last life, I'd stood on this same stage and lost my mind over that ten million. I took the giant check in front of the entire company, watching Desmond work the computer as he wired the money into my bank account. In that moment, I'd thought I'd won at life.The next morning, the police kicked down my door. The company had reported me for delusional disorder, claiming I'd exploited a loophole in the finance system to siphon off ten million dollars.Every video of the award ceremony and every transfer record on my phone had turned into garbled non

We soon reached the interrogation room."Skye, this is a statement about your medical history, signed by your parents."I stared at the pages, my chest tightening. The signatures were genuinely my parents' handwriting.[My son, Skye Kiersey, has recently shown frequent auditory and visual hallucinations, along with growing resentment toward society...]"No, that's impossible!"I slammed my hand on the table."My parents would never say something like this!""Skye, calm down."Detective Marshall held me back."Your parents are outside. They're worried sick about you."Desmond was vicious enough to threaten my parents with the death penalty, telling them the only way to save my life was to prove I was mentally ill. My simple, honest parents had signed just to protect me.Vivian walked into the interrogation room, dressed now in plain clothes, looking fragile and pitiful."Skye, I never thought you'd use my feelings against me like this."Vivian covered her face."You got cl

"It's in your throat! Ha ha ha!"My voice echoed off the padded walls of the isolation room, edged with madness.Desmond's pupils shrank. The false smile on his face froze, his muscles twitching, his eyes flooding with panic. He raised a hand to his throat, his Adam's apple bobbing."You... what are you talking nonsense about?"His voice cracked, betraying just how rattled he was."Nonsense? Desmond, I handled your core ledgers for three years. I know you better than anyone."You're paranoid by nature. You don't even trust Vivian. So where would you actually hide that ten million in dirty money before it gets converted into digital currency?"I kept my eyes locked on him. His hand drifted, unconsciously, to his stomach. The last shred of doubt in my mind vanished. I burst out laughing."That medal was only bait. The real hardware is a microchip."You decided the safest place for it was your own body."So yesterday, right before you went on stage, you used a sip of water as co

The police hadn't arrived yet, but the psychiatric building had already fallen dead silent. Dr. Cohen seemed to have gone off to check his email, and his men stood frozen, glancing at each other, not daring to move.I leaned against the wall, catching my breath, my mind racing through everything I knew. This wasn't enough. Desmond's legal team was strong. He could find a scapegoat and slip free at any moment. I needed evidence solid enough that he could never claw his way back out.I looked up at the air vent connecting to the other wards in the building. I grabbed a chair and smashed open the grate, shouting into the opening."Marcus! Zoey! If you're not dead yet, make some noise!"I've taken Desmond down. The police are on their way. If you want to live, tell me where the ledgers are hidden!"After I finished, two minutes of dead silence followed. Just as I started to think they'd already been killed, a faint, hoarse response drifted up from deep inside the vent."Second floo

The case reached its turning point.Once the police pulled the forged check out from under the bronze eagle statue and forensic testing confirmed the seal was fake, the criminal network behind Desmond collapsed entirely.The moment he was caught, Vivian flipped to save herself, turning into a cooperating witness against him.During cross-examination in court, Vivian laid out every one of Desmond's methods: how he'd used AI to swap the surveillance footage, how he'd spiked the champagne, how he'd bought off everyone around me, even how he'd forged the medical report used to deceive my parents.At the end, Vivian added one more thing."I thought sticking with him would get me everything. Instead, I lost myself along with it."I let out a cold laugh and submitted an audio recording to the judge in open court, one obtained from a foreign medical facility. The recording captured, in clear detail, a conversation between Desmond and an illegal organ trafficking ring overseas."That mat