The Price of Blind Trust and Cruel Coldness Chapter 08
In the ICU at City General Hospital, my mother slowly opened her eyes, staring up at the blank white ceiling. Hospital monitors emitted steady, rhythmic beeps.
A detective sat beside her bed, his expression grave. “Mrs. Lynn, you’ve woken up.”
She turned her head weakly, her voice hoarse. “My daughter… where is my Jennifer?”
The officer fell silent for a moment, then pulled a document out of his briefcase. “Mrs. Lynn, I’m so sorry. Your daughter Jennifer has been confirmed murdered.”
My mom’s eyes widened in horror. Her lips trembled violently, a ragged wheeze rattling in her throat. Tears poured endlessly from her eyes, yet she could not form a single coherent sentence.
I drifted closer, wrapping my spectral form around her shoulders. “Mom, don’t cry. I’m right here.”
But she could not hear me. She could only squeeze the bedsheets tightly, weeping silently.
The case investigation moved forward with overwhelming speed.
Faced with irrefutable hard evidence, Willa and Thomas’s mental defenses completely crumbled.
Desperate to secure lighter sentences, they turned on one another like vicious dogs, spilling every single detail of the plot.
Police reviewed security footage from the theater backstage. The camera clearly captured Willa swapping the blades.
She removed the spring-loaded prop knife and slid a sharpened steel blade into the crate’s hidden compartment. When she finished, she fixed her hair in front of the mirror, a malicious smirk curling her lips.
Investigators also unlocked Thomas’s cellphone. His chat history with Willa was laid out before Detective Chandler, damning and undisguised.
[Tom, when will that frump kick the bucket? I can’t wait to move into your house.]
[Soon, darling. Once she’s gone, everything under her name will belong to you.]
[I tested the knife. It cuts through metal cleanly. She won’t have any way to escape inside the crate.]
[We’ll claim the prop malfunctioned. No one will trace it back to us.]
Detective Chandler scrolled through every message, then turned the screen toward Thomas. “Thomas, you claimed you had no knowledge of the real knife inside the crate?”
Thomas stared at the messages he himself had sent. The last flicker of denial faded from his pupils.
Of course he knew. Not only had he known, he’d helped Willa pick out the knife in person.
They’d stood inside a hardware store that day. Willa had asked him how long the blade should be. He’d told her it needed to reach her heart.
He had told himself it would only be a flesh wound—a scare tactic gone wrong.
He’d hoped the sight of blood would frighten Jennifer into submission. He’d thought she would surrender and leave the house with no assets. Then Willa could move in legitimately.
He had never planned to kill her. Yet the outcome was ten thousand times more horrific than any scenario he’d pictured.
“I never intended to kill her…” His voice sounded like shattered shards of glass. “I truly never wanted her to die.”
Detective Chandler closed the case file coldly. “You should have considered the consequences the moment you bought that knife.”
In the second interrogation room, Willa’s demeanor had shifted entirely.
No more tears, no more manipulative pleading, no more feigned helplessness. She slouched lazily in her chair, a frigid smile playing on her lips.
“I admit I swapped the knife. But we both took part in the attack. I never could have pulled this off without his cooperation.”
“He stood right beside me as I sealed the crate. He heard Jennifer pounding against the metal from inside. Instead of opening it, he urged me to finish taping it shut quickly.”
“Pouring the snakes in afterward was his idea. He said he wanted to teach Jennifer a lesson she would never forget.”
She paused, lifting her wrists to examine the handcuffs.
“You’re wondering if I regret it? My only regret is failing to make him take all the blame from the very start.”
“We were together for three years. Every dollar he spent on me was money stolen from Jennifer. He knew he would have to split half their assets in a divorce. He couldn’t bear the loss. That’s why he needed Jennifer gone.”
“And I needed the legal status of a married man’s partner. We each got what we wanted.”
“He was just far more hypocritical than me. He always insisted on painting himself as the innocent party, making others pay the price for his own desires.”
The female officer set down her pen, staring at Willa’s unnervingly calm face. A deep chill crept over her.
This was not a woman blinded by romantic obsession. She was a calculating predator.
From start to finish, Thomas believed he was the hunter. Willa believed she was the hunter. The one who ended up sacrificed was Jennifer.
Trapped inside a dark metal crate, scraping her nails raw against the iron walls until her fingers bled, never seeing even a single ray of light.