Chapter 5 - The Crack in the Foundation
Tyler was fired before lunch. He left the building in tears, carrying a cardboard box of his belongings.
But my work in Chicago wasn't done. I knew exactly what his first move would be. He would call Daddy.
That evening, I used a burner software program to clone Tyler's phone line, intercepting the call he made to David Miller. I sat in my dark apartment, headphones on, listening to the audio stream.
"Dad, it was a setup! I swear!" Tyler cried into the receiver. "The file was corrupted. I checked it a hundred times before the presentation!"
"Calm down, Ty," David's voice came through, sounding older, more stressed than I remembered. "It's okay. I'll call Marcus Thorne tomorrow. We do business with his brother's firm in Columbus. I'll smooth this over."
"No, Dad, you don't understand! Thorne said I was dangerous! He humiliated me in front of everyone!" Tyler sobbed. "I can't face Mom. She thinks I'm going to be this big-shot architect."
"Your mother doesn't need to know the details," David said, his voice tightening. "She's... she's not doing well, Tyler. Her nerves are shot. Ever since the... since Hannah... she hasn't been sleeping. She keeps thinking she hears things in the house."
I stiffened in my chair. Good, I thought. Let her hear ghosts.
"Just come home for the weekend, son," David sighed. "We’ll figure it out together. We always do."
They always did. Because the rules never applied to the Millers. They could sacrifice a daughter, line their pockets with insurance money and donations, and then pull strings to fix their son's incompetence.
I took off the headphones. It was time to go back to Ohio.
Before I left Chicago, I made an anonymous call to the insurance fraud division of Ohio's state treasury. I dropped a tiny, untraceable hint: The Miller house fire wasn't an accident. Check the kitchen renovation records from three months before the fire. Look for the unpermitted electrical wiring David Miller installed himself to save a buck.
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It was a shot in the dark, but I knew my father. He was greedy. He hated paying certified contractors. If he had messed with the wiring, the forensic investigators would find it if they looked hard enough. And if they found evidence of arson-by-negligence, the insurance payout would be revoked.
The trap was set. It was time to watch them walk into it.
