Chapter 4: The Frame-Up
The photo showed a figure in a dark hoodie, slipping out the back door of my parents’ house just ten minutes before the alarms went off. The face was covered—but the silver locket around the neck glinted bright.
The same locket Colleen was wearing right now.
“You stole it from my mom’s jewelry box that afternoon,” I said, my voice rising. “I wondered where it went. You said you didn’t see it.”
Colleen’s mother stood up, screaming. “That’s not proof! Anyone could have that locket!”
“Anyone else have the key to the back door?” Elias asked. “Anyone else had been fighting with your aunt about the will? Anyone else stood to inherit everything if Clara and her parents were gone?”
Silence.
“Your father changed his will three days before the fire,” Elias went on. “Left everything to Clara. Not you. Not your mother. Her.”
Colleen laughed, high and wild. “He was confused! He was old! She manipulated him!”
“Did she manipulate the gas line too?” Elias pulled out another paper—an inspection report. “The line was cut. Deliberately. And the tool used… it’s the same one missing from your father’s workshop.”
Colleen stepped back, stumbling in her heels. “You’re trying to ruin my wedding!”
“I’m trying to stop you from getting away with murder,” Elias said.
Then security moved—but not toward me. They moved toward Colleen.
And that was when she screamed: “You don’t get to do this! Elias is mine! Everything is mine!”
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