My Stepmother Framed Me for My Sister's Murder to Steal $14 Million — Then I Forced Open the Coffin in Shackles and Found It Empty
The next morning, the stale air of my cell felt charged. The pig’s blood revelation was huge, but it still didn’t tell us where Maya was, or who was truly behind everything.
Later, Ms. Dubois called me to the visitation room. Her face was grim, but there was a flicker of excitement in her eyes.
“Detective Holloway just called me,” she announced, barely waiting for me to sit down. “He’s made an arrest. Malik Broussard.”
Malik. My ex-boyfriend, Evangeline’s loyal enforcer. I hadn’t seen him since before I was locked up. He had always been quiet, fiercely protective of Evangeline.
“What was he doing?” I asked, a knot forming in my stomach.
“Holloway had a tip,” Ms. Dubois explained, leaning closer. “He tracked Malik to a commercial dumpster behind Evangeline’s nightclub, ‘The Velvet Curtain’.”
I knew the place. It was one of the syndicate’s main fronts, always buzzing with activity, even late at night. The perfect place for something discreet.
“Malik was caught red-handed,” she continued, her voice dropping. “He was trying to burn something.”
My heart pounded. “What was it?”
“A metallic box. Inside were three burner phones.”
Burner phones. The syndicate’s favorite tool for untraceable communication. My mind immediately jumped to the texts, the instructions, the staging of Maya’s “murder.”
“Holloway said Malik put up a fight,” Ms. Dubois recounted, a slight tremor in her voice. “A brief physical struggle. Malik was strong, but Holloway managed to secure one device before it was damaged.”
“He got one?” I pressed, a surge of desperate hope rising within me. “An undamaged one?”
“Yes. The other two were too far gone from the fire. But this one, according to Holloway, looked relatively intact.”
A sudden image flashed in my mind: Malik, his face usually stoic, now frantic, shoving phones into a dumpster, the orange glow of a small fire reflecting in his eyes. He must have been under immense pressure from Evangeline.
“Malik is in custody now,” Ms. Dubois confirmed. “Charged with obstruction of justice and resisting arrest. Holloway’s team is hoping to extract data from that phone.”
This was it. A direct link, a physical object that could unravel everything. Malik, caught in the act, trying to destroy evidence. He was loyal to Evangeline, yes, but he was also prone to panic when things went sideways.
“Did he say anything?” I asked.
“Not yet. But getting a burner phone from a syndicate enforcer, right after Hattie’s demands and the pig’s blood reveal? This isn’t just a coincidence, Nia. This is them trying to clean up their tracks before we could find them.”
The idea that the truth was so close, literally stored on a device that Malik had almost incinerated, was electrifying. It was a risky move for Malik, and it spoke volumes about what must have been on those phones. Whatever secrets they held, Evangeline desperately wanted them to disappear.
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