Chapter 10 - THE QUESTION ON PAGE NINE
The disputed question appeared on page nine.
Did the beneficiary have prior knowledge of, participation in or financial motive connected to the insured event?
Victor’s original online submission had marked No.
The hospital confirmation required him to repeat the answer under penalty of fraud.
Evelyn recognized the danger.
Victor did not.
“She’s alive,” he said. “The claim is meaningless now.”
“Then why did you file it?” Adrian asked.
Victor claimed panic.
He said Elena had previously threatened to harm herself.
He produced text messages in which she appeared to write:
Maybe everyone would be better without me.
Elena stared at the screen.
“I never sent that.”
Victor had used her phone while she was locked in the bedroom.
He had created an emotional history for a death he had not yet caused.
Evelyn added that pregnancy had made Elena irrational.
“She imagined threats where none existed.”
Major Hart stepped closer.
“Did she imagine being found beneath a cliff?”
“She could have driven there herself.”
“Her vehicle was still at your home.”
Victor looked at his attorney.
The attorney asked everyone to stop speaking.
Local detectives arrived.
They photographed Elena’s injuries and collected the clothes she had worn on the mountain.
Victor, Evelyn, Mason and Grant were separated for questioning.
Their stories did not match.
Victor said Elena left home alone.
Mason claimed Victor had gone to the lodge with him for a business inspection.
Grant said no one had visited Blackthorn Mountain.
Evelyn insisted she had slept at home all night.
Traffic cameras later showed her vehicle traveling behind Victor’s SUV.
Still, the case was not complete.
The road near the cliff had no security cameras.
The storm had damaged the scene.
Victor’s defense team argued that the tire tracks could belong to anyone.
Then the hospital laboratory found something embedded in the torn shoulder of Elena’s coat.
A small fragment of black leather.
Major Hart compared it to the glove recovered at the cliff.
The material matched.
So did the torn stitching.
Victor had lost part of his glove while grabbing Elena.
The forensic results would take several days.
Until then, Victor was released because investigators had not yet obtained enough evidence to charge him with attempted murder.
He stood outside the hospital under court order to remain away from Elena.
Before leaving, he looked up at her window.
Then he called someone.
“Elena is awake,” he said. “Find the bracelet.”
Major Hart intercepted the call through an emergency warrant.
But she did not recognize the person on the other end.
Adrian did.
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It was the private investigator Victor had used to learn everything about Elena before their first meeting.
👉 Victor had not met Elena by chance in a snowy parking lot—the broken battery cable had been arranged before she ever saw him.
