Chapter 264 Trap Within a Trap
"Call an ambulance!" The cop in front yelled as he rushed into the room, crouching down to check Anna's breathing.
He froze mid-movement, then slowly looked up, his face grim.
"She's dead."
The words hit Stefan like a blast of ice.
His mind went completely blank.
How could she be dead already?
From the moment he noticed something wrong with the wine glass to bursting out and locking the door, less than a minute had passed.
And the glass she drank from didn’t even contain the drug.
The realization hit him like lightning—it was the bottle. The entire bottle had been poisoned.
A trap inside another trap.
Either he drank that heavily drugged glass and they both died, allowing Rufus to pin the blame on Anna, claiming she wanted to take him down with her out of twisted love.
Or, as now, whether he drank it or not, Anna was doomed to die, leaving him as the only person alive at the scene—the only suspect.
"Don't move! Hands up!"
Two cops reacted quickly, cold gun barrels aimed at his head.
One of them was the man with the strange look from before, now wearing a barely noticeable smile.
"Mr. Hensley, you're suspected of murder. Please come with us for questioning."
Stefan's eyes turned sharp and cold.
He swept his gaze over the cops regarding him as a dangerous criminal, over Anna's still-warm body in the room, and finally fixed his eyes on those officers who had arrived so conveniently.
If he still didn’t realize he’d been set up, he’d learned nothing in all these years.
This was an airtight trap.
"I didn’t kill anyone." Stefan’s voice was calm, devoid of emotion. "She drank the poisoned wine herself."
"Whether you killed her or not isn’t for you to decide." The cop sneered. "We received a call from Ms. Clark saying you were going to kill her."
"And when we arrived, the door was locked from the outside by you. The key to open it was in your hand."
"Now, she’s dead."
The cop stared at him and said seriously, "Mr. Hensley, are you telling me this is all just a coincidence?"
The emergency call, the locked door, the only key.
And the only suspect.
All the evidence formed an airtight case. The plan was so precise that it even accounted for police response time.
Stefan’s eyes darkened.
He had still underestimated Rufus’s cruelty—to use Anna’s life to frame him.
How ironic.
Anna had once hired someone to assassinate Cecilia, and in the end, she died by someone else’s assassination.
"Cuff him and take him away!" The lead cop ordered.
Cold handcuffs clamped around Stefan’s wrists.
Just then, the elevator doors opened, and urgent footsteps echoed.
"Stefan!"
"Mr. Hensley!"
Cecilia, Dione, and Garth rushed out.
Downstairs, Garth had felt increasingly uneasy, sensing something was wrong, and immediately contacted Cecilia.
Cecilia’s anxiety exploded instantly. She grabbed the equally worried Dione and rushed over.
But no one could have imagined that what greeted them was Stefan being held at gunpoint by police, handcuffed.
"What are you doing! Why are you arresting my son!" Dione broke down instantly, rushing forward in a frenzy.
"Mom!" Stefan shouted sharply. "Don’t come over!"
Cecilia held tightly onto the emotionally unstable Dione.
Though she was shaken to her core, she forced herself to hold onto her last shred of composure.
"What happened?" She quickly walked to Stefan and asked in a voice only the two of them could hear.
"Anna is dead." Stefan sighed.
The words made both Cecilia and Dione freeze.
They looked through the doorway and saw the stiff body on the living room floor.
"Officer, there must be some misunderstanding!" Garth was sweating profusely with anxiety. "Mr. Hensley couldn’t possibly kill anyone!"
"Whether it’s a misunderstanding or not, he can explain at the station." The strange cop interrupted expressionlessly. "We’ve already pulled the surveillance footage from this building. From 3 PM until now, Stefan was the only person who went upstairs."
"Now, please don’t obstruct official business."
With that, he and his colleague, one on each side, escorted Stefan toward the elevator.
"Stefan!"
Dione’s crying was cut off as the elevator doors closed.
The elevator doors slowly shut.
Cecilia stood there, feeling her limbs turn cold, a chill running up her spine to the crown of her head.
She looked at the closed elevator doors, then glanced at room 1503, now sealed with police tape.
This was Rufus’s revenge.
That lunatic had used Anna’s life to set up a trap, a vicious conspiracy to drag Stefan down into hell.
He didn’t just want to take her away—he wanted to destroy Stefan too.
Cecilia slowly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the panic and fear had faded, leaving only cold hatred.
Rufus, you truly deserve to die.
Meanwhile.
In a coffee shop not far from Blue Bay Apartments.
Elodie stared at her laptop screen, her face pale, her whole body trembling.
Two hours ago, she had seen Rufus meeting with a rough-looking thug in his study.
She recognized him—one of Rufus’s men named Tony.
Rufus handed Tony a room key card and a tiny glass vial, giving him instructions in a low voice.
Driven by instinct, she immediately activated the pinhole camera hidden in her collar and recorded the scene.
Afterward, Elodie quietly followed him out.
She didn’t dare follow too closely, only trailing Tony from a distance to Blue Bay Apartments.
Tony didn’t use the main entrance but went up through the side fire escape, clearly familiar with the route.
There was no cover in the stairwell—if she followed, she’d be spotted, so Elodie could only wait outside patiently.
She waited downstairs for about twenty minutes before seeing Tony come out, quickly get into a waiting car, and disappear.
Elodie didn’t understand what had happened at the time, so she went to a nearby coffee shop and first copied the video to her computer.
Until just now, when a news notification popped up on her phone.
[Hensley Group CEO Stefan arrested at Blue Bay Apartments on suspicion of murdering socialite Anna!]
Location: Blue Bay Apartments.
Victim: Anna.
Suspect: Stefan.
And Rufus’s man, Tony, had appeared at the same location, behaving suspiciously, right before the incident.
All the clues suddenly connected into a bone-chilling truth.
Anna’s death had been planned by Rufus.