Chapter 4 - Marcus Tries to RunMarcus lasted nine days.
Then he panicked.
He moved money.
Closed accounts.
Called contacts overseas.
And booked a private jet to the Cayman Islands.
Unfortunately for him, federal agents were already watching.
His plane never left the runway.
He was arrested carrying:
Three phones.
Two passports.
$180,000 in cash.
And an encrypted laptop.
The laptop became a disaster for my family.
Marcus kept everything.
Threats.
Payments.
Pictures of cash transfers.
He believed deleting messages from his phone erased them.
It did not.
One conversation with Dad read:
MARCUS: If Cross keeps asking questions, shut him down.
DAD: Already handled.
MARCUS: The father or the company?
DAD: Both.
Adrian read it twice.
He looked at me.
“Does ‘handled’ mean my father?”
“We don’t know.”
And I refused to let anger turn speculation into fact.
Investigators eventually established that my father did not kill Thomas Cross.
Thomas’s death remained suicide.
But Dad did help destroy his reputation.
Sometimes reality is terrible enough without inventing murder.
Marcus offered cooperation.
Dad called him a coward.
My mother called me.
She did not ask whether I was okay.
She said:
“You are going to send your brother to prison.”
“No.”
“He committed crimes.”
“You could stop this.”
“How?”
“Say the files were stolen.”
“They weren’t.”
“Say Adrian manipulated you.”
“He didn’t.”
“He married you under false pretenses!”
“That part is true.”
Finally, something accurate.
Mother heard the opening.
“Then come home.”
I laughed.
“Which home?”
“The estate.”
“The one you pledged as collateral for my marriage?”
Silence.
Then she said:
“Your father did what he had to do.”
I looked at the old-man mask sitting inside Adrian’s evidence cabinet.
May you like
“So did I.”
And hung up.
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