“She can’t catch herself on the right side anyway,” my sister allegedly whispered before deliberately pushing me into the pool with my arm locked in a medical brace—but just as she begged her fiancé not to ruin their wedding over a “joke,” her own bridesmaid burst into tears and exposed what Lena had done the night before my shoulder was injured.

In August, nearly a year after the terrifying fall at the Belvedere Estate, a heavy white envelope arrived at my studio address.

It bore the official stamp of the State Department of Corrections.

I sat at my mahogany work desk, the afternoon sun streaming through the skylights, holding the letter in my hands. The return address read: Correctional Facility for Women - Inmate #488219 (Vance, L).

Caleb, who had just arrived with lunch, set the bags down and looked at the envelope in my hands. His jaw tightened slightly.

“Do you want me to throw it away?” Caleb asked gently, sitting on the edge of the desk beside me. “You don't have to open it, Tessa. She has no power over you anymore.”

I looked at the black ink of my name written on the front. The handwriting was recognizable, but sloppy, lacking the sharp, arrogant flair Lena used to obsess over.

“No,” I said calmly. “I want to read it. I need to know that there is nothing left inside it that can ever touch me again.”

Using a metal letter opener, I neatly sliced open the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of lined notebook paper.

The letter read:

Tessa,

They put me in the laundry detail this month. Twelve hours a day lifting heavy industrial bags of wet sheets. My hands are rough. My nails are broken. I look in the small metal mirror on my cell wall every morning and I don't even recognize the person staring back at me.

Everyone here knows what I did. The guards look at me like I’m a monster. The other inmates don't talk to me. I sit alone at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Dad came to visit me last week. It was the first time in six months. He sat behind the glass partition and told me he had set up a trust for your art studio. He told me he was proud of you. He didn't even ask how I was doing. He just told me to accept my sentence and try to find God.

I hated you, Tessa. I hated you for being happy. I hated you because no matter how much money I spent, no matter how perfect my clothes were or how grand my wedding was going to be, people genuinely liked you. They liked your heart. And I knew, deep down, that I didn't have one.

I tried to destroy you so I wouldn't have to feel small. But now I sit in a tiny concrete box while you have everything. You have the art career. You have Mom and Dad. And you have Caleb.

I hope you’re happy.

Lena

I finished reading the letter. There was no apology in it. No genuine remorse for almost taking my life, no real sorrow for the destruction she had wrought. It was simply the bitter, miserable reflection of a person trapped inside the prison of her own toxic ego.

I folded the paper carefully and placed it back inside the envelope.

“What does it say?” Caleb asked softly.

“It says that she is right where she belongs,” I answered quietly.

I opened the bottom drawer of my desk, dropped the envelope inside, and locked it with a small brass key.

I didn't burn it. I didn't cry over it. I simply locked it away like a closed chapter of a dark book that would never be opened again.

I stood up, stepping into Caleb’s open arms. He wrapped his arms securely around me, resting his chin gently on top of my head.