My mother beat me so badly that I blacked out. But the last thing I remembered wasn't the pain. It was my younger sister standing over me, laughing at her phone while I begged her to call for help. Hours later, my family left me in a freezing alley, barely clothed, then went to the police together and told them I was mentally unstable. / Chapter 7 / 20

Chapter 7 - The Interrogation RoomForty-eight hours after the arrests, Detective Cole Voss called Bridget with an unexpected request.

Emma Vance’s court-appointed attorney had reached out to the prosecution. Emma wanted to proffer information. But she had made one specific, bizarre condition before signing a cooperation agreement: she demanded to see me face-to-face.

"You don't have to do this, Tessa," Bridget warned me as we walked down the sterile, linoleum-tiled corridor of the Harris County Pre-Trial Detention Center on Saturday morning. "You are under zero legal obligation to speak to her. The federal case against her is airtight based on the video she took of your assault."

"I know," I said, my voice steady. "That's why I need to hear what she has to say."

The guard unlocked the heavy steel door of Interview Room B.

Inside, Emma sat at a bolted-down metal table. She was wearing an oversized yellow county jumpsuit that swallowed her small frame. Her hair was pulled back into a messy, unwashed ponytail, and her manicured nails were bitten down to the quick.

When the door clicked shut behind Bridget and me, Emma jumped, her eyes wide with panic.

She looked at my face—at the bandages, the dark purple bruising along my jawline, and the healing cut on my cheek. For a long, suffocating moment, neither of us spoke.

"Tessa..." Emma’s voice cracked, sounding fragile and small. "Tessa, please... you have to tell them to let me go."

I didn't sit down. I stood across the table from her, resting my hands lightly on the back of the metal chair.

"Tell who, Emma?" I asked calmly. "The grand jury?"

"You can drop the charges!" Emma gasped, her hands trembling as she reached toward me across the cold table, stopping short when Bridget stepped forward. "Tell the police it was a mistake! Tell them Mom did it! I was just standing there, Tessa! You know I didn't hit you!"

"You recorded it," I reminded her, every word flat and precise. "You held your phone three inches from my face while I begged you to call an ambulance. You laughed while I bled on the floor."

Emma’s chin trembled, tears instantly spilling over her lower lashes. "I... I was scared! Mom told me to record it! She said... she said if we recorded you looking crazy, you couldn't take Dad’s money away!"

"You shoved me out of the back of an SUV into a freezing alley behind a dumpster," I said, my voice dropping into a register so dark that Emma flinched. "You looked at me while I was freezing to death and said, 'Good luck.' You didn't care if I lived or died."

"I didn't think you'd freeze!" she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "I thought... I thought someone would find you! Dad said you were tough! He said you were trying to ruin our lives!"

"Dad lied to you, Emma," I said softly. "Just like he lied to Mom, just like he lied to the SEC, and just like he lied to me for four years. The difference is, I paid attention to the math. You paid attention to the luxury cars."

Emma looked up through her tears, her face pale and blotchy. "What am I going to do, Tessa? My lawyer says I'm facing five to ten years for conspiracy and felony tampering with physical evidence. I can't survive in here! I can't!"

I looked down at my younger sister—at the girl I had tried to protect for years before realizing she had swallowed our parents' toxicity whole.

"If you want to survive," I said, leaning over the table until I was looking directly into her eyes, "you turn over your phone. You give the prosecution the original, unedited video file of the night in the foyer. You give them the audio recordings of Dad telling you how to delete the drive logs. You tell the absolute truth about Arthur and Vivian Vance."

Emma swallowed hard, her chest hitching with ragged sobs. "If I do that... Dad said he'll disown me. He said I'll never see a dollar of the trust."

A cold, tragic laugh escaped my lips.

"There is no trust, Emma," I whispered. "There is no money. There is only a federal prison sentence. Choose who you want to share it with."

I turned on my heel and walked toward the door.

"Tessa! Wait! Please!" Emma shrieked as the guard unlocked the heavy door. "Please don't leave me!"