Chapter 7 - The Desperate Break-In
Three weeks later.
Having posted a $500,000 emergency bail funded by selling off her designer jewelry, Victoria was out on house arrest wearing an ankle monitor.
Driven completely mad by the loss of her fortune, her social status, and her impending prison trial, Victoria refused to accept defeat. She knew that the original physical parchment of Grandfather’s Living Trust—containing the specific handwritten forfeiture clause—was stored inside the fireproof safe in Lucas’s private estate study.
"If the original document burns," Victoria whispered to herself, sitting in her dark, messy apartment, staring at a bottle of lighter fluid on her table. "The court will have to rely on the older draft... the draft where I get my $150 million!"
At 2:00 AM during a torrential thunderstorm, Victoria slipped past her house arrest radius, cutting the electronic strap of her ankle monitor.
Wearing a black raincoat, she bypassed the rear perimeter fence of the estate during a heavy lightning flash, exploiting a temporary power fluctuation in the gate sensor.
She slipped through the kitchen service door using a keycard she had stolen months ago.
Holding a heavy iron crowbar and a bottle of accelerant, Victoria crept up the grand staircase toward the master study, her eyes gleaming with psychotic determination.
"I’ll burn this whole house down," she hissed under her breath. "I’ll burn them both inside it!"
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She pushed open the heavy oak door of the master study and darted toward the wall safe behind the painting.
Suddenly, the lights in the study flashed on with blinding intensity.
