At Emma's funeral, my sister raised champagne beside my seven-year-old's casket: "Stay quiet and let this family have joy." I kept both hands on the pew. Then my nephew pointed at Emma's brown prescription bottle: "She switched the white pills." Her smile died when the phone showed an email titled "Trial Neutralization Progress" saying Emma had to fail the drug trial.

The visitation room at the County Women’s Detention Facility smelled of industrial bleach and damp concrete.

I sat on a hard metal chair behind a thick pane of scratched plexiglass. Five minutes later, the heavy steel door on the opposite side opened, and a guard ushered Callista into the room.

She looked unrecognizable.

Her designer dress had been replaced by an oversized orange jumpsuit. Her smooth hair was messy, tied back with a cheap rubber band. Her perfect nails were clipped short, and her skin was pale, sallow, and bruised around her wrists from the cuffs.

She sat down heavily across from me, picking up the black plastic telephone receiver with shaking hands.

I picked up mine.

"Came to laugh?" Callista asked through the glass. Her voice was raspy, stripped of its arrogance. "Came to tell me how much you hate me?"

"I don't have time for hate, Callista," I said calmly. "You have less than twenty-four hours to live."

She let out a dry, bitter laugh. "Is that a threat, Lia? Are you going to kill me with your bare hands?"

"Not me," I said. "Marcus Kane."

The laughter died instantly in her throat. Her eyes dilated with pure terror.

"I went to your safety deposit box at Central First Bank this morning," I continued, leaning closer to the glass. "I pulled the black key card. We have the Trial Neutralization Progress files. We have the memo about the 85% subject attrition rate. We have the offshore routing codes linking your account to Apex Logistics."

Callista’s breathing became shallow. "You... you took the card?"

"Marcus Kane’s security men were at the bank, Callista," I said. "They weren't there to secure your defense money. They were there to destroy the card so they could pin the entire drug alteration scheme on you. They are going to tell the prosecutor that you acted alone out of personal greed, shifted the pills yourself, and poisoned those children without Aegis’s knowledge."

"No..." she stammered, shaking her head frantically against the glass. "No, Marcus promised me! He said if I stayed quiet during the preliminary hearing, his lawyers would post my bail and transfer me to a private facility in South America!"

"Look at yourself!" I snapped, my voice cutting through her delusions like a scalpel. "Look at where you are! You are sitting in an orange jumpsuit while Marcus Kane is drinking champagne in his penthouse! Do you really think he’s going to send a private jet for a woman who got caught by an eight-year-old boy at a funeral?"

Tears began to spill down Callista’s pale cheeks. She pressed her forehead against the cool glass, her body shaking with silent, terrified sobs.

"They brought me a drink this morning," Callista whispered into the phone, her voice barely audible. "The guard... he gave me a bottle of water that wasn't sealed properly. I didn't drink it. I was scared... I thought I was just being paranoid..."

"It wasn't paranoia," I said softly. "It was your execution."

Callista looked up at me, her face pale, hollow, and completely broken. "What do I do, Lia? Please... tell me what to do. I don't want to die in here. I want to see Brody."

"Brody is safe with David," I said. "If you want to live to see him grow up, you need to sign a full sworn confession right now. You need to turn state’s evidence against Aegis Bio Corp and name Marcus Kane as the primary architect of the trial sabotage."

"If I sign that... Aegis will come after me with everything they have," she wept.

"They are already coming for you, Callista," I said, holding her gaze with unwavering force. "The only difference is, if you sign, the FBI will put you under federal witness protection in a maximum-security medical unit before Marcus Kane can reach you."

She stared at me through the glass for a long, agonizing moment. The silence between us was filled with the heavy ghosts of our past—our childhood, our sisterhood, and the beautiful, innocent little girl who was no longer in this world because of her choices.