After eight months serving overseas, I came home hoping to find peace. Instead, I found my newborn son dangerously ill and my wife sitting on the nursery floor beside his crib, shaking and clearly injured.

Two weeks after the press conference, Audrey Vance sat in a small, cold visitation room at the Westchester County Detention Facility.

Stripped of her designer clothes, her diamond jewelry, and her pristine socialite image, she wore an orange jumpsuit, her dark hair unwashed, her eyes rimmed with red from days of crying.

The heavy steel door creaked open, and I stepped into the room.

Audrey looked up, her expression shifting instantly from despair to sharp, venomous anger. "You came to gloat, didn't you? You ruined my life, Lucas!"

I sat down on the metal chair across from her, resting my arms on the stainless steel table. "You ruined your own life, Audrey. I just stopped you from ruining mine."

"Mom forced me to help her!" Audrey wept, pulling at her handcuffs. "You know how Mom is! If I didn't go along with her plans, she was going to cut off my trust fund! She made me take Sophia's phone! She made me lock the nursery!"

"You had a choice, Audrey," I said, my voice completely flat. "You are twenty-six years old. You could have gotten a job. You could have moved out. Instead, you chose to help Mom starve my wife and watch my baby burn with a fever so you could keep getting a thousand-dollar-a-week allowance for clothes and wine."

Audrey swallowed hard, unable to meet my gaze.

"Miriam spoke to the prosecutor yesterday," I told her. "Because you have no prior criminal record, the district attorney offered you a plea agreement. Five years in state prison in exchange for full testimony against Mom and Harrison."

Audrey gasped, her eyes wide with terror. "Five years?! Lucas... please! I can't survive in prison! Tell them to give me probation! You have the General's support! You can fix this!"

"I am not fixing anything for you, Audrey," I replied. "You showed zero mercy to my wife when she begged you for help. You laughed while my son was sick."

"I'm your sister!" she shrieked, tears streaming down her face. "We grew up in the same house!"

"And that house was built on poison, Audrey," I said, standing up. "You have twenty-four hours to accept the plea deal. If you go to trial, the camera footage from the nursery will guarantee you get fifteen years."

I turned toward the steel door and signaled the guard.