Chapter 6 - The Ultimate Betrayal
With Officer Reid's guidance, a plan was set in motion. The police placed wiretaps on my parents' mobile phones and set up round-the-clock digital surveillance on the Willow Creek property. I agreed to stay in a downtown hotel under police guard while Reid's team monitored the incoming calls. It didn't take long for the trap to spring. At nine-thirty that evening, the wiretap recorded an incoming call to my father's primary phone from an untraceable, encrypted satellite number. Officer Reid had me listen to the live audio feed through a set of headphones in the mobile command unit parked three blocks from my parents' house. The voice on the line was smooth, baritone, and utterly devoid of mercy. "You lied to me, Richard," Victor Sterling's voice echoed through my headphones. My father's frantic, sweating voice responded immediately: "Victor! Please, listen to me! I swear on my life we didn't lie! Ivy was supposed to be there! She... she ran away! She snuck out without telling us!" "I don't care about your domestic excuses," Victor replied coldly. "The agreement was simple. Your daughter Ivy in exchange for Jade's debt and the ledger documents in your floor safe. I sent my operative to collect. The house was empty, and the ledger was missing." "The ledger?!" Richard shrieked. "No! The ledger was in the safe! I left it there for you!" "It wasn't in the safe, Richard," Victor said. "Which means either you moved it, or your daughter took it when she fled.
If I don't have that ledger and the girl by midnight tomorrow, I won't just take your house. I will ensure every member of your family ends up at the bottom of the river." Jade's weeping voice could be heard in the background of the call: "Daddy, please! Don't let him hurt me! Find Ivy! Drag her back here!" My mother's voice joined in: "Richard, call her! Tell her I'm sick! Tell her I had a heart attack! Get her back to the house tonight!" Listening to my own mother actively brainstorm ways to bait me into the hands of a human trafficker burned away the last lingering remnants of my childhood affection. They didn't view me as a daughter or a sister. To them, I was merely a human sacrificial lamb, a disposable asset to be slaughtered so they could maintain their illusion of a perfect, wealthy family. I took off the headphones and looked at Officer Reid. "They think I have the ledger," I said quietly. "Do you?" Reid asked. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my old poetry book—the one I had packed when I fled the house yesterday morning.
