Chapter 44 - The Broken Mirror
Two days later, Jared stood behind the thick, soundproof glass partition in the visiting room of the county detention facility.
On the other side of the glass sat Melissa.
She wore the drab, oversized orange jumpsuit of a maximum-security inmate. Her hair was greasy, unwashed, and pulled back in a messy knot. The expensive acrylic nails she had once flaunted were gone, bitten down to the raw quick. Without her high-end cosmetics and designer wardrobe, she looked twenty years older—a hollow, broken shell of a woman whose vanity had consumed her whole.
She picked up the plastic telephone receiver with trembling, handcuffed hands.
Jared lifted his receiver to his ear. He didn't speak. He simply looked at her, his expression neutral, calm, and distant.
"Jared..." Melissa sobbed, the sound tinny and distorted through the earpiece. "Jared, you have to help me. Please. You have to tell the prosecutor that this was all Marcus! Marcus forced me to do it! He threatened me! He said he would hurt me if I didn't help Darren get the files!"
Jared remained silent, watching her face.
"Jared, I’m your sister!" she pleaded, tears cutting through the grime on her cheeks. "We're blood! You can't let them send me to prison! Think of Mom and Dad! Dad would never have let you do this to me! You have millions, Jared! You have the shop, the land, the big house... and I have nothing! I was just trying to survive!"
"You didn't want to survive, Melissa," Jared said, his voice low, steady, and utterly final. "You wanted to destroy. You sat at my table, ate the food I paid for, and humiliated my motherless children for sport. You laughed while Darren treated Noah and Ellie like animals."
"I was drunk! It was a joke! A Christmas joke!" she screamed, banging her cuffed fists against the metal counter.
"It wasn't a joke," Jared said softly. "It was who you are. When I stopped paying your bills, you didn't look for a job. You didn't reflect on what you had done. You sent a criminal with a crowbar into my shop to steal from my children's future. And when that failed, you brought a monster back from the dead to burn my house down."
Melissa’s face contorted, the desperate pleading suddenly curdling back into the familiar, venomous hatred she had harbored for years.
"You think you're so good!" she hissed, pressing her face against the glass, her eyes bulging with spite. "You think you won! You're just a greasy mechanic! You'll always be the stupid little brother who worked himself to the bone while Marcus and I lived like kings! You think this is over?! Marcus wasn't the only one who wanted that land, Jared! You have no idea who really owns the note on your father's past!"
Jared looked at her for three long seconds. There was no anger left in his chest. No resentment. Only a profound, liberating pity.
"Goodbye, Melissa," Jared said quietly.
May you like
He hung up the receiver, turned his back on the glass, and walked out into the corridor. Behind him, Melissa's muffled screams and the pounding of her fists against the partition were cut off instantly by the heavy steel security doors slamming shut.
***
