Chapter 12 - A Sister's Shadow-12
Six months later.
The iron gates of the Washington Corrections Center for Women stood cold and intimidating against a gray autumn sky.
I sat in the back of my private sedan, watching through the tinted window as a prison transport van pulled up to the visitation building. I had not requested this visit. A formal emergency motion had been filed by Seraphina’s court-appointed appellate attorney, begging for fifteen minutes of my time before she was transferred to a medium-security facility in eastern Washington.
Daniel Cho sat beside me, checking his watch. "You don't have to go in there, Elena. You've fulfilled every legal obligation. You owe her nothing."
I looked at the framed photo of Leo and Maya on my phone screen—they were now two years old, healthy, vibrant, and bursting with life.
"I need her to see me one last time, Daniel," I said quietly. "Not as her financial safety net. Not as the sister she stepped on. But as a mother who survived."
Five minutes later, I sat across from Seraphina in the high-security visitation room.
A thick plexiglass window separated us. Seraphina wore a drab orange jumpsuit, her hair cut short and unstyled, her fingernails bitten down to the quick. The glamour, the arrogance, and the cruel superiority that had defined her entire existence were completely gone. She looked small, hollow, and utterly broken.
She picked up the plastic telephone receiver with a trembling hand. I picked up mine.
"Elena..." Seraphina whimpered, her voice echoing tinny through the speaker. "Please... please help me. My attorney says my appeal was denied. I can't survive six years in here! The women... the guards... it's terrible, Elena! Please, talk to the judge! Tell them I was manipulated by Mom and Julian!"
I looked at her through the glass. I felt no rage. I felt no hatred. I only felt a profound, echoing pity for a woman who had never learned how to be a human being.
"You weren't manipulated, Seraphina," I said softly. "You knew Julian was blackmailing the family. You took thirty thousand dollars a month from my company—money meant for pediatric diagnostic software—and gave it to a killer to protect your luxury lifestyle."
"I WAS AFRAID!" Seraphina sobbed, slamming her hand against the glass. "I was afraid of losing everything! Mom always told me that you were born to support us! She told me you owed us because we took you in!"
"And you believed her," I said. "Because it was easier to treat me like an object than to look in the mirror and build a life of your own."
"Elena... please..." Seraphina wept, pressing her forehead against the cool plastic. "Just pay for a private defense lawyer... just get me home..."
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"You are home, Seraphina," I said, my voice completely steady. "This is the home that Evelyn's greed built for you. Learn to live in it."
I set the telephone receiver back onto its hook, stood up straight, and turned my back on her as she screamed my name through the glass, her fists pounding uselessly against the barrier until the guards pulled her away.
