Chapter 6 - A Sister's Mask Slipping
The seizure lasted forty-eight excruciating seconds.
To me, it felt like forty-eight years.
The lorazepam broke the electrical storm firing through Harper’s over-sedated brain. Her rigid muscles went limp, her head lolling back onto the thin hospital pillow as Dr. Alvarez manually ventilated her with the blue silicone bag.
“Vitals are stabilizing,” the respiratory therapist called out, checking the digital readout. “Heart rate coming back up to sixty-two. Oxygen saturation at ninety-four percent on high-flow.”
Dr. Alvarez wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead, glancing over her shoulder at Nolan and me. “The Clonidine caused an acute rebound hypertensive spike as her liver attempted to clear the concentrated toxin. We’ve countered it, but she is not out of the woods. We need to intubate to protect her airway for the next twelve hours.”
I leaned down, pressing my lips against Harper’s feverish forehead. Her hair was damp with sweat, smelling faintly of the vanilla birthday cake we never got to cut.
“Be strong, my sweet girl,” I whispered into her ear. “Mommy is going to finish this. I promise you, nobody will ever hurt you again.”
Nolan stayed by her side, his large hand enveloping Harper’s small fingers. He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot, his jaw set in stone. “Go with Miller, Camille. Nail her to the wall.”
I nodded.
I turned toward my parents. Richard was still on the floor, his tailored jacket covered in dust, staring at the floor with vacant, hollow eyes. Eleanor stood against the wall, trembling uncontrollably, looking at Harper’s intubated form as if seeing the true face of evil for the very first time.
“Get out,” I told them.
Richard looked up, his face streaked with tears. “Camille... please... she’s our granddaughter...”
“You spent the last six months telling me I was crazy, that I was unfit, that Sabrina was the only one who could protect this family,” I said, my voice ice cold. “You protected a monster while she poured poison into a seven-year-old’s cup. Get out of this room before I have hospital security remove you.”
Eleanor tried to reach out to touch my arm, but Nolan stepped between them, his towering six-foot-two frame an immovable wall.
“You heard my wife,” Nolan said quietly. “Leave.”
Without another word, my father took my mother’s arm, and the two broken shells of my parents shuffled out into the cold corridor, their precious family legacy lying in ashes behind them.
I turned to Detective Miller. “Take me to the precinct.”
---
Thirty minutes later, I stood behind the two-way mirror of Interrogation Room B at the 4th Precinct.
Sabrina sat at the metal table, wearing a faded orange county-jail jumpsuit that had replaced her tailored silk blouse. Her expensive makeup was smudged, her blonde hair disheveled, but the sneer on her face remained untouched.
Beside her sat Arthur Pendelton, the senior corporate counsel for Vance Logistics—a man my father had paid millions over the decades to make problems disappear.
“My client has made her position unequivocally clear, Detective,” Pendelton was saying, tapping his Montblanc pen against a leather-bound legal pad. “This entire situation is a tragic domestic misunderstanding. Mrs. Cross was experiencing severe executive burnout. She mistakenly dropped an over-the-counter holistic sleep aid into the wrong container. There was zero criminal intent.”
Detective Miller sat across from them, his arms crossed over his chest, utterly unimpressed.
“An over-the-counter holistic aid?” Miller echoed. “That’s interesting, Mr. Pendelton. Because we just finished processing the chemical analysis from the state lab.”
Miller slid a paper across the table.
Sabrina didn't look at it. She kept her chin lifted, staring at the concrete wall. “I don't need to read that. Camille orchestrated this. She knew I was under tremendous pressure. Camille probably saw the bottle on the counter, switched the contents to frame me, and used her own daughter as a pawn to take over Vance Logistics!”
Behind the two-way glass, my hands curled into fists until my nails drew blood from my palms.
Even now. Even cornered in an interrogation room, she was trying to spin the narrative.
“That’s a fascinating theory, Sabrina,” Detective Miller said calmly. “Except we pulled the surveillance from the veterinary clinic’s parking lot. We have you on video handing Dr. Julian Mercer an envelope containing fifty thousand dollars in cash behind a dumpster at midnight last Thursday.”
Sabrina’s chin dipped slightly. A crack appeared in her armor.
“Furthermore,” Miller continued, leaning forward, “Dr. Mercer didn't just give us the prescription records. He gave us the encrypted voice notes you sent him via Signal.”
Miller tapped a key on his tablet.
A recorded voice filled the interrogation room—sharp, cold, and unmistakably Sabrina:
*“Make sure it’s completely odorless, Julian. If it tastes too bitter, the kid won’t drink enough of it to shut down her heart before the paramedics get there. I need this to look like an acute pediatric cardiac arrest, not an overdose. Do you understand me? I have twenty-four million dollars riding on this Monday audit.”*
The room went dead silent.
Sabrina’s attorney slowly closed his leather pad. He clicked his Montblanc pen, slid it into his inside pocket, and stood up.
“Arthur?” Sabrina gasped, her voice finally cracking, panic bleeding through the seams. “Arthur, where are you going? Sit down!”
Pendelton didn't look at her. “I represent Vance Logistics, Mrs. Cross. I do not represent individuals who commit premeditated attempted murder against company shareholders. You will be assigned a public defender.”
He walked out of the room, letting the heavy steel door slam shut behind him.
Sabrina sat alone, staring at the empty chair.
Then, she looked directly at the two-way mirror.
She knew I was there.
A twisted, feral smile spread across her face—the mask completely gone, leaving only the raw, unadulterated madness beneath.
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“You think you won, Camille?” Sabrina hissed at the glass, her voice vibrating with venom. “You think that little brat is safe? Check the pantry again, little sister. You didn't find everything.”
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