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Three months later.

The winter air outside the Metropolitan Detention Center was biting cold, carrying tiny flakes of grey snow that danced across the asphalt parking lot. I pulled my thick cashmere coat tightly around my shoulders as I stepped through the heavy security checkpoints of the facility.

I hadn't come here out of anger, nor had I come to gloat over their defeat. I had come because the federal prosecutor had informed me that Eleanor had filed a formal legal petition requesting a private meeting before her criminal trial officially began.

I was escorted into a sterile, concrete visitation room divided by a thick panel of bulletproof glass.

A minute later, the heavy iron door on the opposite side clicked open, and Eleanor Vance was led inside by two armed female guards.

She looked twenty years older. Her hair had turned a faded, dull grey, cut short and unstyled. She wore a orange canvas prison jumpsuit that hung loosely off her frail, thin frame. The arrogance, the cold authority, the terrifying presence that had dominated my entire life was completely gone, leaving behind an empty, broken husk.

She sat down heavily on the metal stool, her hands shaking as she picked up the silver intercommunication telephone.

I picked up my receiver, holding it calmly to my ear.

“You came,” Eleanor whispered, her voice rough and raspy through the electronic speaker.

“I came to hear why you summoned me, Eleanor,” I replied, my tone neutral and detached.

Eleanor pressed her forehead against the cold glass, tears filling her sunken, dark-circled eyes. “Maya... please. You have to help Tessa. She’s dying in here. She’s having panic attacks every single day. She can't survive a twenty-year sentence... please, I’m begging you as your mother...”

“You are not my mother,” I reminded her softly. “My mother died in a hospital room twenty years ago because you turned off the building’s safety valves to cover your husband’s gambling debts.”

Eleanor flinched as if I had struck her. “I didn't mean for Sarah and David to be in that wing! I thought the floor was empty! It was an accident, Maya! You have to believe me!”

“An accident?” I let out a soft, bitter laugh. “Was it an accident when you spent twenty years telling me I was worthless? Was it an accident when you forced me to work eighty hours a week so you could use my legal identity to buy properties for Tessa? Was it an accident when you slapped me across the face outside my home three months ago?”

Eleanor dropped her head, sobbing uncontrollably onto the stainless steel ledge. “I was terrified... the syndicate was going to kill us... I thought if I made Tessa rich, if she married Julian Whitaker, we would finally be safe...”

“You sacrificed one child to elevate another,” I said, looking at her with absolute clarity. “You treated me like a slave because every time you looked at my face, you saw the crime you committed. You hated me because my existence reminded you of the monster you had become.”

Eleanor looked up, her lips trembling, her eyes filled with a hollow, agonizing realization. “What are you going to do to us?”

“I am going to do nothing,” I said, standing up from my chair and buttoning my coat. “The justice system will take care of your sentence. The state has offered Tessa a ten-year plea deal if she testifies fully against you. And according to Arthur, she signed the agreement an hour ago.”

Eleanor gasped, her face turning entirely white. “Tessa... signed it? She betrayed me?”

“She did exactly what you raised her to do, Eleanor,” I said, looking down at her one last time through the bulletproof glass. “She chose herself.”