Chapter 3 - The Perfect Setup
The armed officers swarmed into the shattered entryway with their service weapons drawn.
"Everybody freeze and keep your hands where I can clearly see them!" the lead officer shouted.
Maya was completely paralyzed by terror as she stared blankly at the bloody knife on the floor.
Ethan continued to wail and clutch his bleeding arm while rocking back and forth.
"She went totally crazy and attacked me for absolutely no reason!" Ethan cried out convincingly.
Beatrice immediately threw herself onto the cold floor next to her son.
"My poor baby boy is bleeding to death because of this monster!" Beatrice sobbed hysterically.
I stepped forward to explain the real situation to the police officers.
"Officers, this man deliberately cut himself to frame my innocent daughter," I stated clearly.
"Shut your mouth and step back against the wall right now," the officer ordered me firmly.
Two officers aggressively grabbed Maya and slammed her wrists into cold metal handcuffs.
"Mom, please help me, I didn't do anything wrong!" Maya screamed as they violently dragged her away.
My heart shattered into a million tiny pieces as I watched them take my little girl.
"You are making a terrible mistake," I warned the police while pointing a finger at Ethan.
Paramedics rushed into the kitchen and quickly began bandaging Ethan’s self-inflicted wound.
Ethan looked right over the shoulder of a paramedic and gave me a wicked, triumphant wink.
The lead police officer informed me that I had to leave the premises immediately or face arrest.
I stood alone on the freezing sidewalk as the squad car drove away with my crying daughter.
I frantically walked to my car and grabbed my backup emergency phone from the glove compartment.
I immediately called the best criminal defense attorney in the entire state of New York.
"Marcus, I need you to meet me at the central police precinct right now," I demanded into the phone.
I drove recklessly through the empty city streets to get to the station as fast as possible.
When I finally arrived, Marcus was already aggressively arguing with the desk sergeant.
"They are completely denying her bail because Ethan claimed it was attempted murder," Marcus told me gravely.
"We will pay any amount of money to get her out of that disgusting cell," I insisted desperately.
"The judge placed a mandatory forty-eight hour hold on her due to the extreme severity of the charge," Marcus explained.
I felt physically sick knowing Maya was sitting in a freezing cell all alone.
I desperately needed to find leverage against Ethan to destroy his fake credibility.
I hired a premier private investigator to dig into every single dark moment of Ethan’s past.
By the time dawn broke, my phone buzzed with a heavily encrypted file from the investigator.
I opened the digital file and stared at the shocking legal documents inside.
Ethan had been married once before to a wealthy woman who supposedly died in a tragic boating accident.
He had inherited millions of dollars from her life insurance policy shortly after her sudden death.
My backup phone suddenly vibrated with an incoming text message from an entirely unknown number.
May you like
I opened the mysterious message and felt the warm blood freeze in my veins.
"Ethan's first wife isn't dead, because I am her, and he is trying to kill your daughter next," the message read.
