Chapter 8 - Lorraine’s Dark Secret
The front doors of the estate burst open with concussive force.
"Chicago Police! Drop your weapons! Hands in the air!"
Red and blue emergency strobes exploded through the two-story foyer windows, painting the walls in violent splashes of crimson and cobalt. Half a dozen heavily armed tactical officers swarmed up the grand staircase, their rifles raised, their laser sights painting bright red dots across Daniel’s chest and the jackets of Calder’s enforcers.
The two thugs didn't hesitate. They dropped their weapons immediately, hitting the marble floor with their hands flat behind their heads.
Daniel, however, was past the point of sanity. He gripped the iron crowbar with both hands and lunged toward me with a guttural, animalistic shriek. "I will take you with me!"
*CRACK.*
A non-lethal beanbag round struck Daniel squarely in the center of his chest. The impact blew the air out of his lungs with a sickening wheeze, throwing him backward against the balustrade. He collapsed onto his knees, the crowbar clattering harmlessly down the stairs, before three tactical officers tackled him to the floor, pinning his face against the polished oak.
"Subject secured!" an officer shouted.
Daniel thrashed weakly beneath their weight, sobbing, spitting blood from a split lip, his curses degenerating into incoherent babble.
Thirty minutes later, the estate was surrounded by dozens of police cruisers, an ambulance, and three television news vans that had caught the emergency broadcast on the police scanner.
As the officers hauled Daniel out the front door in handcuffs, a battered yellow taxi cab screeched to a halt at the edge of the police tape.
Lorraine stumbled out into the flashing lights. Her designer clothes were rumpled, her hair a wild, tangled mess, her face completely free of makeup. She pushed past a bewildered officer, screaming Daniel’s name, before she caught sight of me standing on the portico, wrapped in a blanket, speaking quietly with a detective.
Lorraine froze. She looked at her son being pushed into the back of a police cruiser, then turned her bloodshot eyes onto me.
She broke through the perimeter tape and ran up the steps, dropping to her knees right before the detective could stop her.
"Nora! Nora, stop this!" Lorraine wept, clawing at the hem of my jeans with fingers that had lost three of their acrylic nails. "Tell them it was a misunderstanding! Tell them he came to get his things! They're charging him with armed home invasion! That's twenty years in prison! He won't survive prison!"
"He brought armed thugs into my home to kill me, Lorraine," I said, looking down at her with pure, unyielding stone in my eyes. "He made his choice."
"He's Arthur's son!" she shrieked, tears carving dirty tracks through her foundation. "Arthur would never let his blood rot in a cage!"
"That's where you're wrong, Lorraine," I said quietly, leaning down until only she could hear my whisper over the thrum of the idling police cruisers. "Arthur knew Daniel wasn't his son."
Lorraine’s entire body went rigid. The breath died in her throat. The terror in her eyes was no longer about Daniel’s prison sentence; it was about the absolute annihilation of her entire life's lie.
"How... how do you..." she stuttered, her lips turning blue.
"The iron box, Lorraine," I murmured. "Arthur kept the paternity test from 1992. He kept the DNA results that proved Daniel was fathered by his former business partner, Richard Hayes—the man who mysteriously vanished right before Arthur bought out his shares."
Lorraine stared at me as if she were looking at the devil himself.
"Arthur stayed with you to protect the company's public image," I whispered, every word landing like a lead weight. "He tolerated Daniel because he pitied him. But when Arthur fell ill, you tried to speed up his decline, didn't you? You withheld his heart medication during his final month so Daniel could take over before Arthur revised the will."
"No... no, that's not true..." Lorraine sobbed, shaking her head violently, but her trembling hands and dilated pupils betrayed her completely.
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"I found the pharmacy logs, Lorraine," I said, standing back up to my full height. "And Arthur kept the audio recording of you refusing to call nine-one-one when he suffered his final arrhythmia in this very house. The state prosecutor has the file right now."
Lorraine collapsed forward, pressing her forehead against the cold, wet stone of the porch, wailing like a wounded animal as two female police officers stepped forward to pull her to her feet and place her wrists in cold steel cuffs.
