Chapter 6 - The Broken Sister
Before setting the trap for Marcus Vance, there was one piece of unfinished business I had to handle.
At 10:00 AM the next morning, I returned to the county jail. This time, I didn't sit in the public visitor’s room with the plexiglass wall. Because Evan’s legal team had filed an official third-party petition regarding the asset recovery, I was granted a thirty-minute meeting in a private attorney consultation room.
Paige was brought in by a female guard. She looked even smaller than she had two days ago, her dark hair tangled, her hands clutching a small paper cup of water.
She sat opposite me across a wooden table.
"Did you find the drive?" she asked immediately, her voice trembling. "Did you give it to the prosecutor?"
"The drive is secure, Paige," I said, keeping my voice calm and neutral. "And the audio files your father hid on the secondary partition have been decrypted."
Paige froze, the paper cup crushing slightly in her hand. "The... the audio files?"
"You knew about them, didn't you?" I asked, looking deep into her eyes. "You knew Dad was recording Marcus Vance."
Paige swallowed hard, dropping her eyes to the wooden table. "Dad told me... he told me that if anything went wrong at the wedding, the drive was my insurance policy. He said Marcus would pay me off to keep those recordings hidden."
A cold, bitter sadness washed over me. "You weren't just a victim in this, Paige. You were part of the backup plan."
"I was terrified!" Paige burst out, tears streaming down her face as she looked up at me. "Mara, you don't understand what it was like living in that house for the last two years! Every night was an argument! Mom crying because the country club cancelled her membership, Dad punching holes in his study wall because the bank was foreclosing on the office building! They made me feel like if I didn't help them, our whole life was over!"
"Our whole life was a lie, Paige!" I snapped, leaning across the table. "Dad didn't build a business! He built a tower of stolen money and forged signatures! And when it all fell down, he tried to kill me to keep the lie going!"
Paige buried her face in her arms, her shoulders shaking with heavy, ragged sobs.
For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights and my sister’s weeping. I looked at her—the girl I had tried so hard to protect from the darkness of our family—and felt the final remnants of my childhood affection transform into something firm and absolute.
"Marcus Vance approached me yesterday," I said quietly.
Paige lifted her tear-stained face. "What?"
"He offered me one point five million dollars to destroy that drive," I explained. "And he threatened to make sure you spend fifteen years in prison if I refused."
Paige gasped, her eyes wide with terror. "Marcus... Marcus said that?"
"Yes," I said. "He’s going to fall, Paige. Today. And when he falls, the prosecutor is going to review the entire conspiracy case."
I reached into my bag, pulled out a legal document, and slid it across the table.
"This is a formal cooperation agreement with the District Attorney," I said. "If you sign this, you agree to testify truthfully against Marcus Vance and our father regarding the offshore transfers. In exchange, the prosecutor has agreed to reduce your charges to accessory after the fact, with a recommendation for two years of probation and community service."
Paige stared at the paper, her hand hovering over the pen I had set beside it.
"You... you did this for me?" she whispered, looking at me in shock. "After everything I did to you?"
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"I didn't do it for the girl who stood by and watched Dad swing that centerpiece," I said coldly. "I did it for the baby you're carrying. That child deserves a mother who isn't sitting in a prison cell—and a mother who finally learns how to tell the truth."
With shaking fingers, Paige picked up the pen and signed her name at the bottom of the page.
