Chapter 7 - The Matriarch's Poison
While the ambulance sped along the coastal highway toward the Portland Medical Pavilion, sixty miles away in a grimy motel room on the outskirts of Boston, Grant Callahan was coming unhinged.
The ankle monitor lay severed on the cracked linoleum floor, wrapped in layers of aluminum foil and submerged in a bucket of salt water to scramble the RF signal. Grant’s hands were shaking as he swallowed two painkillers with stale tap water. He stared at his reflection in the stained mirror: five days of dark stubble, bloodshot eyes, and the manic glare of a man who had lost everything.
Vanessa sat on the edge of the unmade mattress, her mascara running down her cheeks, clutching her designer handbag like a life raft.
"Grant, this is insane," she whined, her voice high and trembling with terror. "The feds are looking for us. They’re going to find us! Your mother hung up on you! She said she knows about the trust fund! What did you do to her?!"
Grant spun around, his fist slamming into the drywall next to her head with a violent crack. Vanessa flinched, curling into a ball.
"Shut up!" Grant snarled, his voice hoarse. "My mother is an old fool who listened to Mara! Everything—everything I worked for—Mara took it! She gave Julian my code! She froze my money! She thinks she’s going to raise my son and my daughters with some second-rate architect while I rot in a federal penitentiary?!"
"We could just cross into Canada," Vanessa wept. "You said you had friends in Montreal. We can take the back roads—"
"With what money?!" Grant roared, grabbing her handbag and dumping its contents onto the floor. Cheap motel keys, expired credit cards, and a few hundred-dollar bills spilled out. "She froze the accounts! All of them! The only way those funds get released is if Mara signs the rescission agreement before the grand jury convenes on Monday."
He pulled out a burner phone he had bought with cash at a gas station. On the screen was an encrypted text message from an orderly at the Portland Medical Pavilion—an orderly who had once owed Grant a gambling debt.
*Target admitted. Labor suite 4B. Private wing. Minimal federal presence until tomorrow.*
A sinister, desperate smile curled Grant’s lips. "She’s having the baby right now. She’s vulnerable. She’s alone."
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"Grant, don't do this..." Vanessa pleaded, shaking her head. "They have guards."
"They have rent-a-cops," Grant sneered, pulling a concealed carry handgun from beneath his jacket and checking the chamber. "Mara thinks she won. She’s about to find out who really owns this family."
