Chapter 7 - The Brother's BetrayalBy midnight, Ethan was sitting in an interrogation room on the fifth floor of the federal building.
Because he was twenty, his lawyers had tried to claim he was a minor under his parents' influence, but Sarah Vance had shredded that argument within minutes. The cash in his trunk—nearly two million dollars—was tied directly to a withdrawal from an Em-Ben Logistics account that had been flagged by the Treasury Department three hours earlier.
Through the two-way mirror of the observation room, I watched my younger brother. He looked small without his designer clothes and his smug, arrogant smile. He was shivering under the harsh fluorescent lights, his face pale and wet with tears.
"He’ll break in ten minutes," Sarah said, standing beside me with her hands in her pockets. "He’s a bully, Emily. Bullying is a cheap currency; it has no value when you’re facing twenty years in a federal penitentiary."
"He always wanted to be like my father," I whispered, my forehead resting against the cool glass of the mirror. "He wanted the suits, the cars, the power. He didn't care who he had to step on to get them. He used to laugh when my mother blamed me for things he did."
"Do you want to go in there?" Sarah asked.
I looked at her, startled. "Me?"
"We need him to tell us where Richard is," Sarah said. "He won't talk to us. He thinks his father is going to save him. He thinks his father’s lawyers are going to walk in that door and make everything go away. He needs to realize that his father has already abandoned him."
I took a deep breath, smoothing my jacket. "Give me five minutes."
When I walked into the interrogation room, the door clicked shut behind me, the sound heavy and final. Ethan looked up, his eyes widening as he saw me. For a second, his old arrogance returned, his lips curling into a sneer.
"What are you doing here?" he hissed. "Have you come to gloat? You ruined everything, Emily! You ruined our lives!"
"I didn't ruin anything, Ethan," I said, sitting in the metal chair across from him. "I just turned on the lights. You're the one who was caught with two million dollars of cartel cash in your trunk."
"Dad's going to get me out!" he cried, leaning over the table. "His lawyers are already on their way! You're going to jail, Emily! Not me!"
"Our father isn't coming, Ethan," I said gently, my voice filled with a quiet, devastating pity that seemed to strike him harder than any slap. "He didn't buy a ticket for you to Panama. He bought one for himself. He used your name to authorize the cash withdrawal from the bank this afternoon. He left you to take the fall for the money laundering while he fled the country."
Ethan froze. "No... that’s a lie. He told me to load the car. He said he was going to meet me at the airport."
"He’s thirty thousand feet in the air by now, Ethan," I said, sliding the copy of the flight manifest across the table. "He booked a single ticket to Paraguay under a false passport two days ago—before graduation even started. He knew I was going to go public. He knew the audit was coming. He used my graduation as a distraction to make his final exit, and he used you to carry the cash out of the house so he wouldn't be caught with it."
Ethan looked at the paper, his hands beginning to shake. He read the name on the manifest—his father's alias—and the single seat assignment.
May you like
"He left me," Ethan whispered, his voice cracking like a child's. "He left me... and Mom."
"He never loved us, Ethan," I said, reaching across the table to touch his trembling hand. "We were just his assets. And when an asset becomes a liability, a businessman always cuts his losses."
