CHAPTER 7: The Aftermath
I visited Michael in prison two months later.
He looked different. Older. More broken. The confidence was gone.
"Why did you do it?" I asked. "My father never hurt you. My mother never hurt you."
He looked at me with hollow eyes.
"Because I could," he said. "Because I wanted what you had. The money. The property. The power. And I thought I could take it all without paying the price."
"Did you ever love my sister?"
Michael laughed bitterly.
"Love? I don't love anyone. I use people. Your sister was useful. She was attractive. Charming. And stupid enough to believe I would share everything with her."
I stood up.
"I hope you think about that every day for the rest of your life."
Vanessa's trial was even more painful for me.
She sat in the defendant's box, looking empty. The woman I had loved for six years had vanished. In her place was a stranger.
"Daniel," she said one day during the trial, "I did love you. At first. But Michael changed everything. He convinced me you would leave me. That you would take everything from me. That I needed to protect myself."
I looked at her coldly.
"You didn't protect yourself. You destroyed us. You destroyed my mother. You destroyed everything we had."
She cried.
May you like
But I didn't feel sorry for her.
