Chapter 5
The next few weeks were a blur of meetings.
Lawyers.
FBI agents.
Therapists.
Every day, more evidence came out.
More of Ethan and Martha’s secrets exposed.
Agent Torres brought boxes of files to my apartment.
Hundreds of pages.
Emails.
Text messages.
Bank records.
We spread them out on the living room floor, going through them one by one.
The worst were the emails between Ethan and Martha.
Dated two weeks before he locked me in the cage.
Ethan: Once the assets are transferred, I’ll stage her suicide. Pill overdose. Everyone will buy it. She’s been “depressed” lately.
Martha: Good. Make it look real. And make sure the baby is gone too. We don’t need another heir running around claiming what’s ours.
Ethan: Don’t worry. The cage was just the start. By next month, she’ll be gone. And Claire? No one will ever find her.
I read those words over and over.
My blood ran cold.
He hadn’t just planned to lock me up.
He’d planned to kill me.
To kill my baby.
Martha had helped him.
They’d talked about it like it was a business deal.
Like we were nothing.
Lila came over that night.
We sat on the balcony, drinking iced tea.
I showed her the emails.
She cried.
Quiet, hard sobs.
“I knew it,” she said. “I knew Martha helped him. Claire used to call me, crying, saying Martha hated her. That Martha would tell Ethan she was too weak, too stupid, that he should get rid of her. I told her to leave. I begged her. She was scared. She said he’d kill her if she tried.”
Then Rosa came out.
She held something in her hand.
A tattered blue book.
Cover worn, pages yellowed.
A diary.
“I found this the day after Claire died,” she said, her voice shaking. “I was cleaning out her closet. I hid it. I was so scared. Ethan told everyone if anyone said anything bad about him, they’d lose their job. Their home. I have a daughter. I couldn’t risk it. But now? Now it’s time.”
She handed me the diary.
I opened it.
Claire’s handwriting.
Loopy, pretty, slanted to the right.
The first entry was dated six months after she married Ethan.
He hit me today. Because I burned the toast. He said I was useless. Martha stood in the doorway and watched. Laughed. Told him I needed to be taught a lesson.
I want to leave. But I’m scared. He said if I try, he’ll find me. He’ll kill me. He said no one would ever believe me. He’s rich. He can do anything.
Entry after entry.
Pages and pages of pain.
Bruises.
Threats.
Fear.
The last entry was dated the day before she died.
I’m leaving tomorrow. I have a bag packed. I’m going to Lila’s. I’m finally going to be free. I just hope he doesn’t find me. I’m so scared.
I closed the diary.
Tears dripped onto the cover.
Lila held it to her chest, sobbing.
“We have to use this,” I said. “At trial. Everyone needs to know what he did to her. What they both did. She deserves justice. We both do.”
That night, I lay in bed, hand on my belly.
I thought about Claire.
About how she’d been so scared.
So alone.
How she’d never gotten to be free.
I thought about my baby.
How I’d never let anything hurt it.
How I’d fight every single day to make sure no one ever felt as trapped as Claire and I had.
I got up, went to my desk.
Took out a piece of paper.
Wrote two names at the top.
Claire.
Me.
Underneath, I wrote: Justice.
I taped it to the wall above my bed.
Every morning when I woke up, I saw it.
Every night before I slept, I saw it.
It kept me going.
On the hard days.
On the days I wanted to quit.
May you like
I looked at that paper.
And I kept fighting.
