Chapter 4 - The Unraveling of Melanie
The news of Richard and Evelyn Miller’s arrest hit the regional media like a tidal wave. Headlines across the state read: Prominent Developer Charged in Brutal Brick Attack on Daughter; Missing Patriarch Found Alive.
On Thursday morning, four days before my twenty-sixth birthday, I received a call from Detective Beckett.
“Sadie, Melanie’s public defender reached out,” Beckett said. “She’s spiraling in the county jail. She’s realization-struck that her parents are facing twenty to thirty years in federal and state prison, and she’s desperate to make a deal. She wants to speak with you.”
I looked at Wyatt, who was sitting across from me at the kitchen table reviewing the estate’s restoration plans.
“I’ll go,” I told Beckett. “But only if Wyatt and Mr. Grayson come with me.”
An hour later, we sat in a small, windowless consultation room at the Wake County Detention Center.
The heavy steel door opened, and a guard escorted Melanie inside.
She looked entirely unrecognizable. The designer clothes and pristine makeup were gone, replaced by an oversized orange jumpsuit and messy hair pulled back in a loose plastic clip. Her eyes were red, swollen from days of crying.
When she saw me sitting across the laminate table—my face still carrying faint yellow bruising around my eye—she collapsed into the metal chair and began to weep hysterically.
“Sadie! Oh my God, Sadie, I’m so sorry!” Melanie sobbed, reaching her hands across the table.
Wyatt immediately stepped forward, his cold gaze locking onto her hands until she pulled them back in fear.
“Save the performance, Melanie,” I said quietly, my voice utterly devoid of emotion. “Detective Beckett showed me the video from the meter reader. You stood on that porch while I was bleeding on the lawn and told Dad to hit me again.”
Melanie flinched as if she had been slapped. “I didn't mean it! Mom and Dad made me say those things! They manipulated me, Sadie! You know how Dad is! He told me that if I didn't help them get Wyatt, they would write me out of their will and kick me out of the house!”
“You knew Grandpa Arthur was alive in that cottage, didn't you?” I asked, leaning forward.
Melanie swallowed hard, her chest heaving as she looked down at the metal table. She couldn't look me in the eye.
“Answer her,” Grayson demanded sternly from the corner.
“I... I found out six months ago,” Melanie whispered, tears dripping onto her orange jumpsuit. “I went out to the guest house to look for old holiday decorations and I heard someone talking inside. I unlocked the door... and Grandpa was sitting there. He begged me to help him, Sadie.”
A cold disgust settled over my heart. “And what did you do, Melanie?”
“I told Dad,” she confessed, her voice barely audible. “And Dad gave me a fifty-thousand-dollar credit card limit and bought me that BMW. He told me that if I kept quiet, I would get half of Arthur’s company when you were taken care of.”
Wyatt let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “You sold your own sister and your grandfather for a sports car and a credit card.”
“I was scared!” Melanie shrieked, looking at Wyatt with desperate, pathetic eyes. “Wyatt, please! Talk to the prosecutor! Tell them I was just a bystander! I always loved you, Wyatt! I could have made you so happy if you just gave me a chance!”
Wyatt looked at her with a disgust so profound it made her shrink back into her chair.
“You make me sick, Melanie,” Wyatt said, every word dripping with absolute contempt. “The only woman I have ever loved, and the only woman I will ever love, is Sadie. You aren't fit to speak her name.”
I stood up, adjusting my jacket. I felt no anger toward Melanie anymore—only a profound, hollow pity for a sister who had traded her soul for nothing.
“Mr. Grayson,” I said, turning to my attorney. “Provide the District Attorney with Melanie’s full statement regarding her knowledge of Arthur’s captivity. If she wants to plead guilty to felony conspiracy and accessory after the fact, she can do so. But I will not intervene to reduce her sentence.”
“Sadie, please! Don't leave me here!” Melanie screamed, throwing herself against the table as the guards grabbed her arms. “We’re sisters! We’re blood!”
I turned at the door and looked back at her one last time.
May you like
“Blood makes you related, Melanie,” I said calmly. “Loyalty makes you family. You stopped being my sister the day you chose a sports car over my life.”
The steel door slammed shut behind us, cutting off her screams forever.
