Chapter 239
“I’m going to carve that little face up.” Charla’s voice hissed out of the speakers and filled the lobby. “I’m going to make you ugly so your daddy won’t look at you anymore.”
Elia’s terrified sobbing followed. “No! Mommy!”
The room erupted.
“Oh my god,” a reporter whispered.
“She has a knife on a kid!” another shouted.
Charla’s face had gone the color of chalk. “No! That’s not me! That’s — that’s CGI!”
“Is it?” Cailin asked. “Because the metadata matches the hospital’s own security logs. That file just emailed itself to every news outlet in this room.”
Hilliard rose to his feet. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. Seeing it again — hearing those words directed at his daughter — made his blood run hot and cold at once. He took a step toward the stage.
“You threatened my daughter,” he said. His voice was dangerously quiet.
“It’s fake!” Charla screamed, tears streaming down her face. “Hilliard, she fabricated all of this!”
“And this?” Cailin asked. “Is this fabricated too?”
She pressed the button again.
The screen flickered.
This time, there was no video. Only audio. But the waveform danced across the display, jagged and violent.
The sound of wind. The creak of metal.
“Here we are.” Charla’s voice. Clear. Undeniable. “Top of the world.”
“Charla, stop.” Cailin’s voice. Frightened.
“There are no cameras up here,” Charla said. The malice in her tone was quiet and chilling. “If I jump… Hilliard will blame you. He’ll hate you forever.”
“Don’t do this!”
“Goodbye, Cailin. Enjoy prison.”
Then: the sound of a struggle. Fabric tearing. A scream that faded into the wind.
The audio cut out.
Silence. Absolute, suffocating silence.
Gregg English lunged for the AV system’s power cord. “Turn it off! It’s illegal! Wiretapping!”
Vance Holloway stepped out from the side of the stage and hip-checked Gregg squarely into a potted plant. “Leave it, Gregg. The show isn’t over.”
Cailin lowered the controller. She looked out at the reporters. They were typing furiously, cameras rolling, streaming the revelation live.
“She jumped,” Cailin said simply. “She framed me. Just as she framed me five years ago.”
Charla sat rigid in her wheelchair, her mouth opening and closing. “It’s fake! You can’t prove that was me — it’s just audio!”
“I can prove it,” Hilliard said from the front row.
He stood, turning to face the press. He produced a remote from his jacket pocket and gave a single nod to Vance.
The screen behind Cailin flickered again.
Video this time. Enhanced, high-contrast security footage captured from the park’s elevated camera. The reporters gasped as it played — the image unmistakably clear. It showed Charla dangling from the gondola. It showed Cailin straining, pulling her upward, fighting to save her. And then it showed Charla deliberately kicking away from the car and leaping onto the platform below.
“My security team recovered and enhanced the footage,” Hilliard announced, his gaze locked on Charla with cold, absolute disgust. “She wasn’t pushed. She jumped. And she lied to the police to frame an innocent woman.”