Chapter 2: A: The Covert Recording

👉 Previous decision: You chose to secretly record the midnight exchange through the wall with your hidden mobile phone.

I pulled my old smartphone from my pocket, its screen still cracked from a fall years ago. My fingers fumbled with the record button, the red light blinking.

The wardrobe, heavy and cheap, scraped against the floor as I nudged it. I pressed the phone against the tiny hole in the plaster.

A muffled echo carried through, then the crisp, unmistakable sound of a notary stamp. Julian’s voice, smooth and condescending, filled the phone’s microphone.

“She won’t even remember this conversation tomorrow,” he said. A dry laugh followed.

“The old girl’s losing it,” Arthur Phelan’s voice chimed in. “Good thing we have those backdated forms.”

My hands tightened around the phone. The screen showed the blurry outlines of their figures, illuminated by a single lamp.

I could see the glint of a silver pen, then the dark silhouette of Julian leaning over a table.

“Another property secured,” Julian muttered. “Offshore, untraceable. All her remaining residual rights are practically ours.”

“Just need her signature on the conservatorship. Then it’s watertight,” Phelan added.

I watched as Phelan carefully sealed another document in an envelope, then slid it into a leather briefcase. My chest felt cold.

They were systematically dismantling my life, piece by piece, while planning to lock me away. The recording kept rolling.