Chapter 3 - The Frame Job
The cold metal of the handcuffs bit into my wrists.
I was shoved against the hospital wall, the sterile white tiles pressing into my cheek.
“Listen to me!” I screamed, struggling against the officer’s grip.
“My mother and sister are lying to you!”
Nurses and patients stared at us as I was dragged through the hospital corridor.
I could not leave Emily and Noah now.
Not when they were fighting for their lives.
“You have the right to remain silent,” the officer droned on, completely ignoring my pleas.
They pushed me into the back of a police cruiser.
The rain was still pouring outside, blurring the neon hospital sign in the distance.
I sat in the darkness, my mind racing through the past four days.
Every phone call with my mother played in a loop in my head.
She had controlled the narrative, showing me only brief glimpses of Emily.
She had been setting me up from the moment I left town.
But why would my own mother do this to me?
At the police station, I was thrown into a gray interrogation room.
An hour passed before a detective walked in and dropped a thick folder on the metal table.
“Your mother, Linda, paints quite a picture of you, Ethan,” Detective Vance said.
“She claims you have been emotionally unstable since the baby was born.”
I shook my head violently.
“It is a lie, all of it is a lie!”
Vance opened the folder and slid a photograph toward me.
It showed a bruised and battered Ashley, my sister, crying in the precinct lobby.
“Ashley says you attacked her before you left on your business trip,” Vance continued.
“She says you forced them to stay at the house to hide what you did to Emily.”
I stared at the photo, recognizing the background of my own living room.
But I had never laid a hand on my sister.
“Check the flight records,” I pleaded desperately.
“Check my hotel receipts, my work logs, check everything!”
Vance sighed and pulled out a digital tablet.
“We did check your work logs, Ethan.”
May you like
He turned the screen toward me.
“Your company says you were fired two weeks ago.”
