They Faked Her Paralysis, But I Recorded Their Betrayal novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Clip

Melina walks out on Colin, and the Foundation posts a clip calling her a violent heiress; her accounts freeze and a stranger texts her to read page nine.

I was in our bedroom pulling a duffel bag off the closet shelf when Colin came home.

He had followed me from the gala, twenty minutes behind.

I heard him in the front hall, putting his keys in the dish, taking his time.

I tapped record on my phone and set it face up on the dresser.

"Mel?" He stopped in the doorway, and his face went soft. "Hey. Hey, what are you doing?"

"Packing."

"You're overtired. Tonight was a lot." He crossed the room with his hand out. "Give me your phone, sweetheart. Let's get you some water."

"Why do you want my phone?"

"Because you'd have to be out of your mind to think I'd hurt you." He smiled. "You've had champagne, you've been under stress, and you're about to do something you can't take back."

I'd had half a glass, and he knew it.

"Do you believe I grabbed the wheel?" I said.

"Of course I do." He answered right away. "I've never said otherwise."

"Elora stood up tonight, Colin. In heels."

"She did not."

"I watched her."

"You've had a head injury, Mel. You've had memory problems for three years." He said it gently, and he said it again, slower. "You're confusing what you want to see with what's real."

I looked at his good suit and his careful face.

He was lying to me in the voice he had used to propose.

"Okay," I said, and zipped the bag.

"Okay, you'll lie down?"

"Okay, I'm leaving."

His hand closed on the strap. "This is the Foundation's house, Melina. Mother owns it. You can't just walk out and expect to come back when you're ready."

"I wasn't planning to come back."

"You don't have anywhere to go."

"I'll manage."

I pulled the strap out of his hand, picked up my phone and walked down the stairs.

He didn't follow me to the door. He stood at the top of the staircase.

"Everyone's going to see you the way you really are," he called. "Not the way you pretend."

I stopped on the porch and turned the recording off.

My car was still in the garage downtown, so I took the old Honda from the carport, the one Hal had kept running since college.

At the end of our street I pulled over and checked my phone.

Eleven notifications, all from the Hollin Foundation's page.

They had posted a video forty minutes ago.

A grainy stage-left camera, the kind they use for donor reels, had caught the corridor behind the curtain.

It showed me standing over Elora's wheelchair.

The chair was on its side, wheels spinning, and Elora was lying on the floor with one arm out.

I had never touched it.

When I left the corridor, that chair had been upright with its brakes locked.

Somebody had knocked it over after I was gone and then cut the footage to start there.

The caption read: Heiress attacks disabled sister at her own charity gala. We are heartbroken.

Under it, Constance had written: Please pray for Elora, and for Melina, who needs help.

Forty thousand people had liked it.

The first comment said I should be locked up.

The second said they hoped Elora's husband sued me.

Elora has no husband. They meant mine.

I sat at the stop sign and I did not cry, because it wouldn't have changed anything.

Then my phone buzzed with a bank alert.

Your joint account has been frozen at the request of the account holder.

I opened my own savings app and the balance was there, but when I tried to move anything the screen said Access restricted.

I opened my work email. The Foundation's server had already locked me out.

A third alert said my card for the lab building at the Foundation was deactivated.

Constance had moved the second my chair went over.

I had known she was fast. I hadn't known she was this organized.

I called Hal.

He picked up on the fourth ring, grumpy and half asleep. "Melina? It's midnight."

"Do you still keep that cot in the back?"

"I keep it for you." The grumpiness went out of him. "What happened?"

"I'll tell you when I get there."

I was pulling away from the stop sign when a text came in from a number I didn't know.

It had no name and no greeting.

Read page nine of the folder. Don't let Elora see you read it.

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