Chapter 7 - Aunt Clara’s Revelation
I froze in the doorway, my arm instinctively wrapping tighter around Jessica’s shoulders while Olivia hid safely behind my leg, peeking out with wide, curious eyes.
“Aunt Clara?” I breathed, the name surfacing from the deep, dusty archives of my childhood memories.
Clara stood up slowly, setting her coffee cup down on the piano bench. She was Carmen’s younger sister—the black sheep of the family who had supposedly been banished decades ago for “stealing family heirlooms,” according to the stories Carmen used to tell me.
“It’s good to see you, Zayden,” Clara said, walking across the Persian rug with steady, unhurried steps. She stopped a few feet away, her eyes scanning my face, then moving down to Jessica and Olivia. “And you must be Jessica. And this little spitfire is Olivia. I’m so sorry it took this long for someone in this family to tell you the truth.”
“You knew?” I asked, my voice tight with a mix of shock and lingering disbelief. “You knew what Carmen was doing?”
“I knew everything,” Clara sighed, gesturing toward the velvet armchairs. “Please, sit down. Let’s get you all comfortable. You’ve had a hell of a month.”
We sat down in the parlor. Detective Reed stood near the doorway, keeping watch while flipping open his notebook just in case.
“Carmen wasn’t just a difficult sister,” Clara began, pouring herself another cup of coffee from a silver pot on the side table. “She was a black hole. Anything—or anyone—that came near her gravitational pull got crushed into pieces. When your father tried to stop her illegal loan operations back in the nineties, Carmen didn't just threaten him; she systematically isolated him from every friend, every colleague, and every relative we had.”
Clara leaned forward, her eyes locked onto mine.
“When your father died of that sudden heart attack at age forty-five, the doctors found trace amounts of heavy synthetic blood-pressure-suppressing compounds in his toxicology report. Compounds that Carmen was prescribing for herself under a false medical alias.”
My blood ran cold.
“She murdered him?” I whispered.
“We couldn't prove it then,” Clara said grimly. “She covered her tracks too well, bribing a local coroner and intimidating the investigating detective into calling it natural causes. But she couldn't forge the property deeds. That’s why she locked them away in that vault in Phoenix. She was waiting until you were old enough to sign them over to her under the guise of ‘estate management,’ just like she tried to do with your apartment.”
Jessica reached over, squeezing my hand so hard her knuckles turned white. “And she tried to do the exact same thing to us. She treated Olivia like a servant, starved our finances, and tried to drive me insane.”
“Because cruelty is all she knows,” Clara said softly. “She doesn't know how to love. She only knows how to own.”
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“Well, she’s out of options now,” Detective Reed spoke up, stepping into the room. “Between the financial fraud charges in Phoenix, the forged deeds, and the reopened investigation into historical extortion in Maryland, Carmen isn’t seeing daylight anytime soon. The district attorney is pushing for a maximum consecutive sentence.”
Clara nodded slowly, a look of profound peace washing over her weathered features. “Good. Then the ghost can finally be laid to rest.”
