“Taking out insurance on a spouse is entirely legal,” Warren snapped.
“You listed yourself as the sole beneficiary, and eight weeks ago, your home network logged multiple internet searches regarding how insurance claims are processed when a death results from an unexpected allergic reaction.”
The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly from a marital dispute to a severe criminal confrontation.
Warren stared at Lillian with growing panic. “Did you hand over my personal laptop to the police?”
“No,” Teresa answered calmly. “We obtained a formal judicial warrant during the early morning hours.”
Real fear took hold of Warren’s features. “You have no right to search my private files!”
“We also recovered your deleted text messages,” Teresa added.
Warren opened his mouth to protest, but the detective did not pause.
“You sent multiple messages to a woman named Chloe Bennett.”
Lillian lowered her head, already familiar with the name of the woman her husband had been seeing for two years.
Teresa read the messages aloud: “‘After February, we will no longer have to hide our relationship.’ And another sent shortly after: ‘When everything is finalized, we can sell the lake house.’ And four days before the attack: ‘I just need you to trust my plan this time.’”
Warren went silent, his hands trembling at his sides.
Lillian took a deep, steadying breath. “How much was my life worth to you, Warren?”
He looked at her, his posture collapsing. “Please do not do this, Lena.”
“I want an honest answer,” she insisted. “Was my life worth six million dollars to you?”
Warren clenched his jaw tight. “You do not understand the pressure I was under!”
Lillian offered a sad, weary smile that Charles knew he would never forget. “For thirty years, I understood everything you wanted me to understand. I accommodated your late work schedules, your constant business trips, and your long silences. I ignored the faint perfume on your shirts and the phone calls you hung up the moment I walked into the room.”
Her voice cracked under the emotional weight. “I even tried to understand that another woman made you feel young and excited again.”
Warren looked down at his shoes.
“What I will never understand,” Lillian continued softly, “is why you did not simply ask for a divorce if you no longer loved me.”
No one in the room moved or spoke.
Warren slowly lifted his head, a cold bitterness creeping into his expression. “Because everything of real value was held in your name alone!”
Lillian stared at him, stunned. “What did you say?”
“The house in the suburbs belonged to your father, the land up north was inherited from your family, and your share of the business venture came from your relatives,” Warren confessed, his voice rising in anger. “If I had divorced you after all these years, I would have walked away with far less than I deserved!”
Those words seemed to cause him genuine pain, revealing that his true distress stemmed from financial resentment rather than guilt over his crime.
Lillian closed her eyes in disbelief.
“Do you have any idea how hard I worked to make those drugstores profitable?” Warren demanded, stepping closer. “Do you know how much time and energy I invested into building our lifestyle?”
“So you decided to murder me just to keep my money,” Lillian said flatly.
“I wanted what was rightfully mine after thirty years!”
“And you wanted to spend it with Chloe.”
Warren offered no defense.
“You needed me dead,” she stated.
“I had no idea your reaction would be so violent and sudden!” Warren blurted out.
Teresa raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Her medical history explicitly warns of fatal anaphylactic shock.”
Warren turned sharply toward Charles, his eyes filled with rage. “You told her about this! You set me up!”
Charles frowned deeply. “What are you talking about, Warren?”
Warren began to laugh, a bitter sound that echoed off the hospital walls. “Of course it was you. The great Dr. Charles Fletcher, the perfect hero who always knows the right thing to do!”
“Stop talking, Warren,” Charles warned sternly.
“No, I am not going to stop!” Warren’s eyes hardened with decades of buried jealousy. “Since everyone here wants the absolute truth, let us bring everything out into the open!”
Lillian watched him intently. “What else could you possibly have to say?”
Warren grinned maliciously. “Charles has been desperately in love with you for forty long years, Lena.”
Lillian remained perfectly still. “I know that already.”
Warren’s cruel smile vanished instantly, replaced by sheer astonishment. “He actually told you?”
“He told me last night,” she replied calmly.
Warren looked at Charles with an expression of disbelief before letting out another loud laugh. “Finally! It took you forty years!”
Charles stepped forward. “Do not try to deflect from what you have done here today!”
“It was always about you two, wasn’t it?” Warren hit his own chest with his thumb. “All my life, I had to compete with your memory!”
He looked directly at Charles. “I got to her first, Charles!”
Charles felt a strange emptiness settle in his chest. “What did you just say?”
“I said I got to her first!” Warren boasted with a mixture of rage and pride. “I knew you were planning to confess your feelings to her at the graduation party! I watched you follow her around all evening like an insecure idiot, and I knew you would never build up the courage to speak!”
Lillian’s eyes widened in horror.
“So I stepped in and made my move before you could,” Warren admitted.
The entire room fell completely silent as the truth hung in the air.
“Did you manipulate everything back then?” Lillian asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“Everyone knew how he felt about you, Lena!”
“You told me that Charles was secretly dating another girl that night,” Lillian recalled, her voice growing shaky.
Warren tilted his head slightly. “I needed you to stop waiting for him to speak up.”
Lillian placed her hand over her mouth as tears spilled over.
“You also told me that Charles had made fun of my feelings,” she continued, her voice rising in anguish. “You told me he went around telling everyone that I was desperately chasing after him!”
“We were eighteen years old!” Warren yelled back defensively.
“So was I!” Lillian screamed, losing control for the first time since waking up. “I agreed to marry you because I believed the man I truly cared about had publicly humiliated me!”
Warren spread his hands open. “But you grew to love me over time!”
Lillian looked at the man she had lived with for three decades as if seeing a complete stranger for the first time. “No,” she said with absolute clarity. “I simply learned how to build a comfortable life with you, and those two things are not the same at all.”
Warren turned pale as those words hit him.
Teresa stepped forward, pulling out a set of handcuffs. “Warren Prescott, you are officially under arrest for attempted premeditated murder. You have the right to remain silent…”
Before she could finish reading his rights, Warren placed his left hand flat against his chest.
At first, Charles assumed it was another dramatic attempt to gain sympathy, but within seconds, he noticed the sudden grey pallor spreading across Warren’s skin, accompanied by profuse sweating and rapid, shallow gasps for air.
Warren’s knees buckled, and he slid down the wall onto the floor.
Thirty years of medical training kicked in before Charles could process any personal emotion. “Get an emergency crash cart in here right now!” he shouted into the hallway.
Charles dropped to his knees beside his former friend and tore open Warren’s shirt. “Stay calm, keep breathing!”
“Do not… save me…” Warren gasped, clutching his chest tightly. “I am not… going to prison…”
Charles placed his hands over Warren’s sternum, aligning his position. “I told you to be quiet!”
He began rhythmic chest compressions. Thirty compressions, two quick ventilations, thirty more compressions.
The emergency team burst into the room, attaching monitor leads that quickly confirmed a massive cardiac arrest.
