Chapter 47
Forty-Seven
Ellie
One month later
“Thank you for meeting me for brunch—there's been so much going on for you lately, I figured it was best if we lay low for
a while.” Aubrey's smile is soft. “And I figured maybe you needed some time to process everything.”
I swirl the last of the champagne in my glass as we sit across from each other at La Grande Boucherie in Midtown. “I've been
on the phone with detectives almost every day since Jack's arrest,” I admit. “It's been a lot”.
“I bet. The idea that I ruined our friendship has been eating at me. El, I need you to know: I never actually slept with Jack
and I never would have. I just needed you to believe that we might so you could see who he really is and not the person he
told you he was.” Aubrey's apologetic eyes hang on mine.
I nod. “Thanks for clarifying that. And you didn't ruin anything—you just removed the veil from my eyes.”
Aubrey's smile is weak. “I'm not sure if Kat would want me to tell you the details, but I feel like I have to if we have any chance of being close. Jack was one of my targets—just like the professor and the Surgeon General and your father were yours. I'm so sorry things ended up this way, though.”
“You don't have to say sorry. I understand why things had to unfold the way they did. Seeing you and Jack together was hard,
but I'd rather know what he's capable of than live a lie in my marriage,” I reply.
She nods, still apologetic. “Are we okay?”
“We're more than okay.” I stand and move around the table to wrap her in a hug. “We're sisters—nothing will ever change that.”
“Okay,” she says, swiping the emotion from her eyes. “I'm glad you feel that way. I've never had much of a family, but you
matter to me, Ellie, more than anyone ever has.”
“I feel the same way. Actually—I have an appointment to visit Jack at the correctional facility in an hour; you should come
with me and we'll really make him lose his mind.”
Aubrey raises an eyebrow. “That sounds like fun, but something tells me it's too soon.”
“Probably,” I laugh, sitting back down and tearing off a piece of buttery croissant and popping it into my mouth. “I like
the idea of shoving the knife a little deeper into his back, though. Does that make me a bad person?”
“Probably,” Aubrey chuckles, “but revenge looks good on you.”
Jack doesn’t see me.
The glass between us is a mirror on one side—an invisible veil he rants into, blind to my face just behind it. I sip from the Styrofoam coffee cup the nurse handed me when I walked in. The coffee is cold. I don’t care. The bitterness grounds me.
Inside the observation room, Jack thrashes against the restraints strapped across his wrists and ankles. His skin is sallow,
his hair disheveled. He looks less like the man I married and more like something feral—stripped of his tailored suits and
power games. Just a man, cornered and unraveling.
“She’s the crazy one!” he roars, spittle flying. “My wife—Ellie—she’s the one you should be locking up! You have to believe
me!”
His voice cracks on the word wife, like it still means something. Like he hasn’t spent the last year methodically poisoning my mind and body, pushing me toward
the edge just to watch me fall.
“She lied to everyone! She’s not innocent—she’s a goddamn psychopath! I was trying to protect her, help her! You have to listen to me!”
The nurse closest to him steps forward, a pill cup in her gloved hand. Jack jerks his head back like she’s trying to smother
him with it.
“Get away from me! I’m not sick—she’s sick!”
He bucks hard, the restraints digging into his flesh. He knocks the cup to the floor with a violent sweep of his shoulder,
the pills scattering across the linoleum like spilled teeth.
“Just give him the shot,” another nurse mutters.
A third one approaches with the syringe. Jack sees it and screams—a raw, ragged sound, like he’s a dog backed into a corner.
But the fight drains from him fast. The needle pierces his skin. Within seconds, he’s slumping in the chair, his head lolling,
his voice falling to a hoarse, delirious whisper.
“. . . you don’t understand . . . it wasn’t supposed to be this way . . .”
I take another slow sip of my coffee.
It was always going to end this way.
Jack was transferred here—to the psychiatric wing of the correctional facility—after his arraignment. The state psychiatrist
testified that he was in a state of “acute psychotic decompensation” during the final incident. A fancy way of saying he’d
finally snapped. The kitchen fire sealed it. That footage alone was enough to convince the authorities that I was telling
the truth.
They know now he set the fire. They know about the drugs—how he crushed them into my tea, into my food, into my bloodstream—until
I was sleepwalking through my own life.
They know he installed cameras in every room. That he recorded me showering, sleeping, crying. That he watched my pain like
a hobby, as if he were a god.
They know about the gun in the sink.
And they know what it was used for.
The CEO—Colton Raines—was never just a random casualty. The murder had nothing to do with me. Not at first. It was a dirty
business deal gone sideways. My father’s fingerprints were all over it; Jack just did the clean-up. Paid some strung-out street
thug to pull the trigger, then planted the murder weapon in our apartment to frame me in case things went south.
They went south.
The cops traced everything—emails, bank transfers, burner phones. Jack wasn’t just sloppy. He was arrogant. He thought he
could do anything, take anything, and no one would touch him.
He thought I would stay broken.
That was his first mistake.
I feel no pity watching him now. Not when I remember how he smiled while telling me I was losing my mind. Not when I remember the bruises I woke up with and couldn’t explain. Not when I remember how he’d hold me after each breakdown—and whisper how lucky I was to have him.
They tried to take me down.
Jack. My father. They wanted me to disappear. Into pills, into padded rooms, into silence. But I didn’t.
Because beneath the confusion, the gaslighting, the drugs, the surveillance . . . I remembered who I was. And I gathered every
piece of evidence, like bones, like a trail leading out of the woods. I built my way back with proof.
Jack may have orchestrated the manipulation. But he never thought I’d take notes.
He never thought I’d fight back.
The security footage. The financial records. All of it. A fortress of truth.
He doesn’t know Aubrey was part of it. That she came to me weeks ago, whispering apologies, a plan. He doesn’t know she slipped
me access to another one of his work phones—the one that held every message between him and my father about the hit on Colton
Raines.
Jack whimpers in the chair, sweat slicking his temples, eyes heavy-lidded, pupils swimming. He looks up at the glass. He can’t
see me, but for one wild second, I imagine he feels me there. He doesn’t scream this time. He just stares. And trembles. A
nurse walks into the hallway behind me. She offers a polite nod as she passes, unaware of what’s ticking behind my eyes.
I take one last sip of coffee, now ice-cold. A smile spreads across my face. Because Jack thought he’d committed me. But in
the end, I committed him. He’s the one behind the two-way mirror now. He’s the one whose mind is unspooling.