Related Cases (2)
Related Novels (5)
Related Chapters (7)
The Last Confession
Words: 2847 · Source Novel:: Debts of the Past
Eleanor locates a dying, bedridden forger named Hollis Crane who served time with Blackwood under a different alias. Crane reveals that Blackwood assumed a dead child’s identity to escape a prison sentence and built his fortune on the backs of swindled investors—many of whom died in obscurity. Hours after Eleanor’s visit, Crane suffocates in his nursing-home bed. She realizes that Blackwood’s web of informants runs deep and that she has become a target.
Vermillion Silence
Words: 3218 · Source Novel:: The Swindle Canvas
On the morning of his hearing, Evan’s loft is discovered. He is seated dead before his final self-portrait, paintbrushes arranged like surgical instruments, the studio completely silent. The cause of death is poison from pigments he mixed himself. The self-portrait depicts him as a martyr, his paint-stained hands forming a sign language “W” for “witness.” The canvas is titled “Swindle v. the Dead.” He has died by his own hand, turning his body and final work into irrefutable evidence.
The Patron of Ruin
Words: 3158 · Source Novel:: Malice Without Reason
Driven by a morbid obsession, Elias abandons his original con and tracks the Benefactor’s network. He discovers that the man has never profited from any scheme; he only cultivates brilliant swindlers, elevates them, and then engineers their catastrophic downfall for his own entertainment. The Benefactor, aware of Elias’s pursuit, sends him an invitation through a corrupt lawyer involved in the Reynolds civil settlement. Elias walks into a silent penthouse where the Benefactor reveals he knows “Victor Hale” is a ghost, and proposes a game: Elias must con the Ashford police union out of their brutality settlement fund within seven days, or be exposed and killed. The stakes are now for pure survival, and the monster wears no mask at all.
The Charitable Predator
Words: 3048 · Source Novel:: Malice Without Reason
Reemerging as the mysterious financier “Victor Hale,” Elias infiltrates a gilded underworld of high-end swindlers. He sets his sights on Marcus Webb, a philanthropic con man running a fake charity for disabled veterans. Elias meticulously constructs a reverse Ponzi trap, posing as a corrupt European investor seeking to launder a fortune. Just as Webb is about to bite, Elias uncovers a hidden ledger revealing that all of Webb’s operations are silently bankrolled by a ghost-like sponsor—someone who claims no share of the profits.
Layers Beneath the Gesso
Words: 2087 · Source Novel:: The Swindle Canvas
Evan Swindle, a clinically depressed hyperrealist painter, loses his disability benefits appeal with the Social Security Commission of Meridia. To survive, he takes a commission to restore a disputed 19th-century landscape. While removing old varnish in his silent studio, he discovers an anachronistic pigment and a hidden underdrawing of a wheelchair symbol, a clue that the “masterpiece” was painted much later by an unknown, disabled artist.