The Hollow Claim

In the rain-slicked streets of Meridian City, claims investigator Elias Voss uncovers a labyrinth of forged medical records and staged accidents designed to defraud the Social Security disability system. When a routine traffic fatality reveals a pattern of psychological manipulation—victims stripped of their will until they unknowingly enact their own destruction—Voss is drawn into a deadly game. Each piece of evidence leads him closer to a mastermind who hides in plain sight within his own profession, a puppeteer who turns people into instruments of fraud before discarding them as collateral damage. Voss must confront not only a conspiracy of silence but the chilling realization that the loss of autonomous will is the ultimate theft, one that leaves no physical marks but shatters the soul.