Chapter 5 - The Frame-by-Frame Execution
The sound of the laptop’s spacebar was the loudest noise in the world.
Declan didn't look at Talia as she screamed. He simply tapped the key, and the 4K video feed flared to life on the high-resolution retina display, angled so that Eleanor, Richard, and the hair stylist could see every single pixel.
The image was so clear you could see the individual threads in the carpet runner.
“Look at the screen, Mr. Vance,” Declan said, his voice like iron grinding against stone.
On the screen, the timestamp read: **23:10:14**.
The video showed the East Gallery, silent and empty under the amber chandelier light. Then Talia appeared. She was wearing her ivory rehearsal sheath, holding her flute of champagne.
“Stop it!” Talia screamed, taking two awkward, tangled steps off the pedestal, her lace train catching on the mahogany wood. “Turn it off! Mom, tell him to turn it off right now! He’s trespassing!”
Nobody moved. Eleanor’s eyes were glued to the screen, her lips slightly parted in confusion.
On the screen, Talia walked up to the heavy oak fire door. She didn't look drunk. She looked around the corridor, checking both directions with sharp, bird-like jerks of her head. Then she reached into her beaded clutch, pulled out a brass wedge, and knelt.
The camera zoomed in automatically, using the hotel’s predictive tracking software.
The frame showed her manicured fingers jamming the wedge deep into the upper hinge assembly, forcing the hydraulic safety arm to disengage. Then the audio came through the laptop’s high-fidelity speakers:
*The metallic, hollow *clack* of the safety valve popping.*
On the screen, Talia stood up. She grabbed the heavy brass handle, pulled the oak slab open three feet, and let it go. Without the hydraulic resistance, the hundred-and-fifty-pound oak slab slammed shut with a concussive *BOOM* that rattled the microphone.
Talia smiled on the tape. A cold, satisfied, predatory smirk.
“What is that?” Richard whispered, his voice cracking, the bourbon glass trembling so violently in his hand that droplets splashed over his knuckles. “Talia... what were you doing with the fire door?”
“She wasn't doing anything!” Eleanor shrieked, though her voice lacked its earlier certainty. “The door was broken! The hotel has faulty hardware! This is a setup!”
“Keep watching, Mrs. Vance,” Declan said smoothly. “We are approaching the thirty-fourth minute.”
On the screen, the timestamp shifted: **23:14:02**.
I entered the corridor. On the screen, I was leaning heavily on my carbon-fiber cane, my navy jumpsuit swaying, my face drawn with pain.
The audio feed picked up Talia’s voice with terrifying clarity:
*“Dragging that pathetic leg around. Thinking she’s better than me because she builds bridges. Let’s see you walk down my aisle tomorrow, you ugly bitch. Let’s see what Aean looks at when you’re crawling.”*
Eleanor gasped, her hand flying to her throat. The makeup artist backed slowly toward the suite’s service entrance, her eyes wide with terror at the scene unfolding before her.
Then the climax of the tape arrived.
I was halfway through the doorway. My right foot was planted on the threshold.
Talia didn't slip. She didn't stumble.
On the 4K feed, the entire room watched as my sister Talia planted both feet firmly on the carpet runner, locked both hands around the brass lever handle, threw her head back, and put the full weight of her torso into a violent, vicious, downward and inward swing.
The oak slab caught my knee.
The sound that came through the speakers was not just a bone breaking. It was the high-tensile *ping* of medical titanium snapping, followed by the wet, sickening crunch of splintered bone.
Then my scream filled the penthouse suite—so loud, so raw, so filled with agony that Eleanor physically flinched, clamping both hands over her ears.
On the screen, I crumpled to the floor, clutching my bleeding thigh.
And on the screen, Talia stood over me. She didn't look down with remorse. She looked directly at my face, took a sip of her champagne, and laughed.
*“Oh my God, it was an accident! You are so dramatic, Mave! I just slipped on the runner! Pull your leg out and get up.”*
The video continued. It showed my father rushing out, handing the fifty-dollar bill to the busboy. It showed my mother checking the hem of Talia’s dress while blood pooled on the carpet around my knee.
Declan paused the video on a freeze-frame: Talia’s face, captured in absolute clarity, smiling down at my twisted body with her teeth bared in triumph.
The silence in the penthouse was suffocating.
Even the air conditioning seemed to have stopped humming.
Talia stood against the three-way mirror, her chest heaving, her breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Her makeup was already beginning to streak with cold sweat.
“It... it doesn't prove anything,” Talia whispered, her voice shaking violently. “It was a joke. I was joking with her. I didn't think the door would hit her that hard! It slipped!”
“You tampered with a Class-A commercial fire door five minutes prior to the assault, Ms. Vance,” Mark Higgins said, stepping forward and opening a manila folder. “That establishes premeditation under Illinois Criminal Code Section 12-3.05: Aggravated Battery causing great bodily harm and permanent disability. That is a Class X felony, carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of six to thirty years in the Department of Corrections without the possibility of probation.”
Richard looked like he was having a stroke. He reached out to support himself against the wet bar, his fingers knocking over a crystal decanter.
“No... no, no, this is a family matter,” Richard choked out, looking at me with pleading, bloodshot eyes. “Mave... Mave, sweetheart, you wouldn't do this to your sister. She’s getting married in two hours! Think of our name! Think of the shame this would bring on the family!”
“Our name?” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, but cutting through the room with the force of a wrecking ball. “You stepped over my bleeding body to check if her silk dress had a stain on it, Father. You handed a boy fifty dollars to dump me on the street so your guests wouldn't see an ambulance.”
“Mave, please!” Eleanor wept, sinking to her knees beside my wheelchair, her hands reaching out to touch my arm. For the first time in thirty-four years, Eleanor Vance was kneeling before her eldest daughter. “She’s your sister! She’s your baby sister! She made a mistake! She was stressed about the wedding! You know how nervous she gets!”
“Do not touch me,” I said.
Eleanor pulled her hands back as if she had touched a hot stove.
“Mom!” Talia screamed from the mirror, her voice turning completely feral. “Get up off the floor! Stop begging her! Look at her, she’s enjoying this! She’s a monster!”
Talia tore her veil off her head, ripping several strands of her styled hair out with the comb, and threw the lace onto the floor, stomping on it with her satin heels.
“She’s doing this because she’s jealous!” Talia shrieked, her face turning purple with rage. “She’s always been jealous! She was jealous when I got into Northwestern, she was jealous when I got the car for my sixteenth birthday, and she’s jealous because Aean loves me and nobody will ever love a dried-up, miserable workhorse like her!”
“Talia.”
The voice didn't come from inside the living room.
It came from the open foyer.
Everyone turned.
Standing in the doorway of the Penthouse Suite, wearing his formal charcoal wedding tuxedo with a white rose pinned to his lapel, was Aean Sterling.
He had been standing there for three minutes.
May you like
And his face was completely hollow.
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