Chapter 7 - Serena’s Cracking AlibiSerena did not sleep.
She remained at Victor’s lodge because he insisted leaving would look suspicious. Police interviewed them separately before dawn.
Victor’s version stayed consistent.
Elena had been emotional.
She walked too close to the edge.
He reached for her.
She fell.
Serena repeated the story until the detective asked one question.
“Why did your vehicle stop at a closed viewpoint during a storm?”
Serena looked toward Victor through the glass wall.
He could not hear her.
She said they were taking photographs.
The detective asked where the camera was.
Serena said Victor used his phone.
The phone contained no cliff photographs.
Only messages about insurance documents and the board petition.
She changed the answer.
They stopped because Elena felt sick.
The detective asked why emergency services were not called immediately.
Serena had no explanation.
Victor entered the room after the officers left.
“What did you say?”
“The truth we agreed on.”
“What exactly?”
She repeated the statement.
Victor’s expression tightened when she mentioned nausea.
“That was not part of it.”
“I needed a reason for stopping.”
“You created inconsistency.”
Serena stared at him.
“We pushed a pregnant woman from a cliff.”
“You did not push anyone.”
“I watched.”
“Then remember your role.”
The words frightened her.
Victor did not see her as a partner.
Only a witness he needed controlled.
At the private hospital, Adrian’s team intercepted a call Serena placed to her sister.
She cried.
Said she had made a terrible mistake.
Said Victor promised Elena would only be frightened into signing documents.
The call stopped when Victor entered the room.
Elena listened to the recording from her hospital bed.
“So Serena did not know he would push me?”
“She knew enough to go to the cliff,” Adrian said.
Elena agreed.
Ignorance of the final movement did not erase preparation.
But Serena’s fear could become evidence.
Adrian authorized an anonymous message to her secure phone.
It contained one audio clip.
Victor’s voice from the cliff:
For fifty million dollars? She better be.
No explanation.
No threat.
Only proof that someone had heard.
Serena played it three times.
Victor noticed her face.
“What is it?”
She locked the phone.
“My sister.”
He took one step closer.
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
The refusal surprised both of them.
Victor’s expression changed.
The same cold calculation Elena had seen before the fall entered his eyes.
Serena backed toward the lodge door.
“You said no one heard us.”
“No one did.”
“Then how did they get the recording?”
Victor reached for her phone.
Serena moved away.
He grabbed her arm.
The lodge’s interior camera captured everything.
Serena screamed.
A security employee in the lobby entered and separated them.
Victor immediately transformed.
He apologized.
Claimed grief had overwhelmed him.
Serena looked at the man she had planned to build a future with.
For the first time, she saw the same danger Elena had seen too late.
She left the lodge under police escort.
That afternoon, she requested an attorney and offered a statement.
Not full cooperation.
Not yet.
But enough to admit Victor chose the cliff and ordered her to help create the insurance policy.
Adrian watched the interview remotely.
“Elena, she can connect the plan.”
Elena looked through the nursery window toward Hope’s bassinet.
“Then let Victor believe she is still loyal.”
A controlled leak reported that Serena had confirmed the accident story.
Victor relaxed.
Then he called the trust attorney again.
May you like
This time, he discussed the altered beneficiary documents openly.
👉 Serena had begun helping investigators, but Victor’s next call revealed that the fifty-million-dollar policy was not the largest prize.
