Chapter 9 - The Confession Tape
I didn't kill Harrison Vance. Tempting as it was to let the darkness consume me, I knew that becoming a murderer was exactly what Victor wanted. It would validate every lie he had ever told about my violent nature.
Instead, I zip-tied Harrison’s wrists behind his back, shoved him roughly into the passenger seat of my SUV, and drove straight back to Manhattan—not to the police precinct, but to a secure, private recording studio owned by a trusted media conglomerate friend of mine.
By 4:00 PM, Harrison was strapped securely to a sturdy wooden chair in front of a high-definition studio camera with dual lavalier microphones clipped to his collar.
I stood behind the cameraman, holding a glass of ice water, watching Harrison sweat under the scorching studio lights.
"This is illegal! This is coercion!" Harrison shouted, straining against the heavy zip-ties biting into his wrists.
"It's an unedited, voluntary deposition, Harrison," I replied, gesturing to the camera operator to hit record. "You're going to state your full name, your position at Hale Meridian, and every single detail regarding the illegal confinement of Margaret Hale, the embezzlement of corporate funds, and Victor Hale’s criminal conspiracy over the past twenty years."
"I'll never talk! Victor will disbar you, ruin you, destroy your entire—"
"Victor is currently sitting in his penthouse watching his stock plummet by thirty-four percent because of the asset freeze I initiated this morning," I cut him off smoothly, stepping into the camera frame and leaning over the back of his chair.
"He doesn't care about you, Harrison. To Victor, you're just a hired tool—a disposable instrument. The moment you became a liability, he sent you here to eliminate me. Do you really think he's going to spend millions in legal fees to rescue a lawyer who failed to kill an unarmed man?"
Harrison’s face went completely pale. The arrogant, untouchable corporate counsel facade crumbled away, leaving behind a terrified, cornered coward.
"If... if I sign... if I tell the truth... what happens to me?" Harrison whispered, his voice trembling.
"Cooperation with federal prosecutors is your only path to avoiding twenty years in a maximum-security penitentiary," I replied, placing a certified copy of the federal immunity agreement drafted by my attorney on the table in front of him. "Start talking, Harrison. And start with the day my mother vanished."
For the next two hours, the studio microphone captured every dark, hidden secret of the Hale empire.
Harrison confessed to everything: the fabricated embezzlement charges, the illegal wire transfers routed through Swiss and Cayman accounts, the falsified death certificates, and the exact coordinates of every hidden asset Victor owned.
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When the recording finally stopped, the cameraman looked at me with wide, horrified eyes. "Ethan... this is a bombshell that will shake Wall Street to its foundations."
"Good," I said, ejecting the master memory card and slipping it into my breast pocket. "Because the storm hasn't even started yet."
