Chapter 7 - The Road to Mercy General
The ambulance ride was a blur of flashing red lights, the rhythmic beep of monitors, and the searing, rhythmic agony of contractions that gave me no time to recover.
"Contractions are two minutes apart, lasting sixty seconds," the paramedic sitting beside me announced over the radio to the hospital. "First-time mother, advanced dilation, facial contusion present. Have OB team standing by in Trauma Bay 2."
Richard sat on the small jump seat at the head of the stretcher, holding my left hand. His grip was the only anchor keeping me from drowning in the pain.
"You did it, Lydia," he kept murmuring over the siren's howl. "Your father would have been so proud of you. You stood there like a mountain."
My father had been a carpenter. A quiet, honest man who built dining tables that lasted fifty years and never took a dollar he hadn't bled for. When he died, Eric had scoffed at his worn tools, calling them junk. Eric had sold my father’s pickup truck while I was still in the hospital recovering from grief, claiming we needed the cash for our joint checking account.
Now, I knew where that money had really gone. It had gone to a boutique hotel in South Beach where he took Brooke for their first anniversary.
"The folder..." I gasped, arching my back as another wave squeezed my spine. "Richard... the secondary files in the folder..."
"Don't worry about the forensic documents now," Richard insisted. "We have them. The Department of Justice has already been notified. Eric's bankruptcy fraud crosses federal lines because of the wire transfers to Nevis. He's facing ten to twenty years."
"No," I breathed, sweat drenching my hairline. "Page forty-two... did you read it?"
Richard frowned, adjusting his glasses. "The offshore custodian's correspondence?"
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"The money..." I clenched my teeth as the contraction peaked, feeling my daughter driving lower, fighting her way out. "It wasn't just his money... Richard. Look at the incoming wires... from the Cayman accounts..."
Before Richard could answer, the ambulance screeched to a halt, the rear doors flew open, and the bright, sterile lights of the Mercy General emergency bay flooded in.
