Chapter 12 - The Whisper from Cellblock C
The rain hammered against the reinforced glass of the maximum-security visiting booth at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
Ethan Vance sat behind the partition, his hands cuffed to the steel counter. Two months in solitary confinement had stripped away his tailored Savile Row suits and arrogant veneer. His cheeks were hollow, his skin gray under the hum of fluorescent bulbs. But when he saw Claire and Marcus sit down opposite him, a cold, sickening smile touched his cracked lips.
"I wondered how long it would take you to find the ring," Ethan rasped into the receiver.
"You’re facing thirty years for conspiracy, kidnapping, and embezzlement, Ethan," Marcus said, his voice flat and dangerously steady. "The board stripped your license. Your accounts are seized. If you’re playing games from inside a cage, you’re only buying yourself twenty more years in federal isolation."
Ethan leaned forward, his chains clinking against the metal. His eyes locked onto Claire. "Do you honestly believe Charles Whitmore was the mastermind, little maid? You think an old drunk who couldn't balance his own offshore accounts orchestrated a twenty-year ghost ward at Briarcliff?"
Claire picked up her phone, pressing it to her ear. Her voice did not waver. "Who sent that envelope to Margaret House?"
"Room 417 wasn't a prison, Claire," Ethan whispered, his breath fogging the glass. "It was an exchange point. Your mother—the woman currently baking pies in your lovely little shelter—never spent twenty years behind that padded door. She was placed there six months ago when the real patient became... unmanageable."
"You’re lying," Claire snapped, her pulse pounding in her ears. "We have the DNA. We have the hospital records!"
"You have the DNA that Charles *wanted* Marcus to find," Ethan sneered. "Check the crypt, Marcus. Go open your father-in-law's tomb. Look at the brass plate beneath Charles's casket. Ask yourself why the Whitmore family foundation made wire transfers to Zurich three days *after* the funeral."
May you like
Ethan leaned in until his nose almost touched the partition. "There is another sister, Claire. And she’s coming to burn Margaret House to the ground."
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