Chapter 12
The arrest of Marcus Thorne sent shockwaves through Elena’s defense team. Stripped of her primary legal strategist and facing airtight proof of conspiracy, financial fraud, and the newly launched exhumation investigation regarding Clara’s death, Elena’s impenetrable facade finally began to crack during a second round of intense interrogations at the precinct.
Sitting in the stark, windowless interview room, Detective Vance slid the newly authenticated bank statements and Thorne’s full confession across the metal table. Thorne hadn't lasted twenty minutes under questioning before trading Elena out to save his own legal career.
"Your lawyer gave you up, Elena," Detective Vance said quietly, watching her closely for any micro-expressions of panic. "He confessed to planting the forged ledgers at your direct command, and he confirmed the offshore routing numbers lead straight to accounts under your maiden name."
Elena stared at the photographs of the documents, her long brown hair falling forward to shadow her face. The elegant poise that had defined her public persona for years was completely gone, replaced by the bitter, exhausted reality of a sociopath cornered by her own meticulous miscalculations.
"He’s a coward," Elena whispered, her voice raspy and devoid of its usual theatrical warmth. "He always was."
"You traded human lives like stocks on a market, Elena," Detective Vance replied coldly. "Not just two-year-old Lily, who you tried to suffocate for convenience, but Clara as well. The coroner's preliminary findings from this morning's exhumation already show traces of the paralytic agent in her bone tissue."
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Elena didn't deny it. She slowly raised her head, her dark eyes locking onto the two-way mirror where David and Evelyn stood watching from the observation room. "She was weak," Elena spat, a bitter smile twisting her lips. "Clara was too soft for the world she lived in. And Lily... Lily was a anchor holding David to a ghost. I was simply cutting the weight loose so we could fly."
In the observation room, David stood gripping the metal railing so hard his knuckles turned white. Hearing her confess so casually to murdering his first wife and trying to kill his daughter washed away the last remnants of his grief, replacing it with an unbreakable resolve to ensure she never saw the outside of a prison cell again.
