“Am I?” I raise a brow. “Funny. I thought I was just... remembering.”
I walk over to the far wall, press a key on the laptop perched on the end table. The screen lights up with a blinking red box:LIVE STREAMING ACTIVE.
Jack’s face drains of color. “What is that?”
“Everything you just said,” I say, “and everything you’re about to say... is being streamed to a private server. Recorded. Secured. With instructions to go public if I don’t check in within the hour.”
“You’re bluffing.”
I smile. “You really think that, after everything you taught me?”
The silence thickens.
Jack stands abruptly. “Ellie, come on. This is paranoid, it’s—”
“You tried to have me committed.” I throw the words like daggers. “You and him, conspiring over lunch meetings and offshore accounts. You wanted me gone before I could remember too much. Before I found out what you did to her.”
“Your mother was unstable, El.”
“No,” I whisper. “She was inconvenient.”
He doesn’t reply. I cross the room, standing over him now.
“You should know,” I say softly. “I’m not going away. Not quietly. Not obediently. I’ve spent my whole life walking the line. But this? This ends now.”
Jack tries again, softer this time. “Ellie... think about what this could do to your reputation.”
I laugh. A dry, humorless thing. “You should worry about your own.”
The camera records everything. The silence. The fear.
And for the first time in my life, I’m not the one being watched. I’m the one watching. And Jack’s about to burn. He stands in the middle of the living room, sleeves rolled up, veins bulging in his neck, breathing like a cornered animal.
I move to the kitchen island, opening Jack’s laptop, then pressing play on the security footage of the night he lit the fire. I’ve cut it to less than a minute, then set it to loop. To play his crimes over and over. His eyes widen as he registers what he’s watching. Him, guiding me to the couch, my stumbling steps, obviously drugged. Then he exits only to return moments later and light the kitchen burner on fire. Flames rise and lick the vent hood. In the video, Jack glances around the room, then rushes to the couch and wakes me, making sure I’ve seen the fire before he runs to the burner and extinguishes it like a hero.
“What the hell did you do?” he hisses in real time.
The air crackles. I should be afraid; I’m not. I’m cold. Controlled. Calculated.
“I sent everything,” I say. My voice is calm, detached. Like I’m telling him I left the groceries in the car. “The footage, the fake passport—Julian—,” I continue, “the burner logs, the files you kept hidden under that false drawer in your office. All of it. To the police. To the feds. To a few journalists who’ve been just dying for a scandal like this.”
Jack stares at me like he doesn’t recognize the woman in front of him.
And maybe he doesn’t. Good.
“Ellie,” he says, voice trembling. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“Oh, I do.” I smile thinly. “I painted them a picture. A chilling portrait, actually—of a husband who drugged his wife with Ambien to make her docile. Who installed surveillance cameras to monitor her every breath. Who manipulated her, isolated her, and made her believe she was dangerous.”
“I did it for you,” he says, voice rising. “You were too emotional, Ellie. Too soft. You cried when you read about kids dying overseas, for god’s sake. You hesitated. You questioned the money, the deals. You were too moral for the business. Forourbusiness.”
“You meanyourempire of fraud, embezzlement, and bribery?” I ask. “Built on the backs of people who trusted you? People like me you victimized?”
“I had to control you,” he says, seething. “You wouldn’t listen. You wouldn’t play your part. Your goodness was a liability.”
He lunges. Before I can blink, he’s across the room, yanking open the kitchen drawer. He throws utensils out like a madman until—he finds it.
The gun.
