Chapter 4

The silence in her cell was a heavy blanket.

Another day, another round of accusations whispered by guards.

Then, the sterile chill of the TMU chamber again.

Ethan wouldn't meet her eyes this time. Chloe stood closer to him.

The second dose. Sharper, colder.

The screen lit up again, not with the hurricane, but with a different storm.

A crisis within the Harrison family, months before the massacre.

Mr. Harrison, his face etched with worry, pacing his study.

Mayor Thompson, smug and predatory, across the desk from him.

Blackmail. Fabricated evidence of illicit dealings with a charity fund.

The threat of public disgrace, financial ruin.

Ethan, younger, angrier, confronting Thompson's enforcers, trying to intervene.

The projection showed him being brutally beaten, warned off. His injuries were severe.

The family was on the brink.

Then, the scene shifted.

Mrs. Harrison, her eyes filled with a desperate trust, talking to Sarah.

She was giving Sarah access to family emergency funds.

"For your future with Ethan," Mrs. Harrison had said, a sad smile on her face. "For the wedding."

The irony was a bitter pill.

The next image: Sarah at a bank, withdrawing a huge sum of cash. All of it.

The observers in the next room erupted.

"Thief!"

"She was planning it all along!"

Chloe Vance's voice cut through the uproar, clear and damning.

"She was bleeding them dry! Setting them up!"

Ethan flinched as if struck. He turned to the one-way glass, his face a mask of fresh agony.

"You planned this," he choked out, his voice barely a whisper, yet it carried to Sarah. "All of it. You stole from them, then you killed them."

His belief in her guilt, already a mountain, became an unshakeable fortress.

Sarah felt a tremor of despair, but her face remained still. The truth was far more twisted.