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Chapter Twenty When Graves Speak
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2025-04-30 15:29:39Elena
It wasn’t enough to know Sophie was a liar. I needed to prove it—publicly, undeniably, irreversibly. That meant going where no one had dared. To the beginning. To Ava’s grave. The cemetery sat on the outskirts of town, forgotten by most, surrounded by wild grass and rusted gates. Jasper parked beside me in silence, letting the engine hum as he stared out the windshield. “You sure about this?” he asked. “No,” I admitted. “But we’re past that point.” He nodded. “Her records say she was cremated. No real burial. But I found a stone. Someone placed it for her anyway. A symbolic grave. Maybe guilt. Maybe Sophie.” The wind howled as we walked. I found the name carved faintly into a weathered headstone: Ava Montgomery 1992 – 2011 “She was light before she was taken.” Taken. Not lost. Not gone. Taken. That word wasn’t random. Someone had carved it in pain. “Who was she, really?” I asked aloud, my voice caught between anger and grief. “And what did Sophie take from her?” Jasper lit a cigarette beside me, even though he’d quit months ago. “She was Sophie’s opposite. Sweet. Fragile. Honest to a fault. Sophie needed her for one thing—sympathy. And when Ava couldn’t keep up with the games, she became a liability.” “You mean… Sophie let her die?” “I mean Sophie orchestrated it.” I turned to him sharply. “She ran a scam—identity theft, sympathy grifts, rehab donations, foster care donations that went into offshore accounts. Ava found out. Threatened to expose her.” He flicked ash onto the dirt. “Next day, Ava was dead. A ‘suicide.’ No autopsy. Closed case.” My stomach clenched. The kind of twist that felt like choking on your own heartbeat. “You have proof?” “I have someone who might.” He handed me a name: Melinda Rhodes. A former social worker. She’d left the country for years after Ava’s death, but Jasper tracked her to a hospice outside the city. She was dying. And she had nothing left to protect. I met her the next day. She was skin and bone, wrapped in a faded blue shawl, her eyes sunken but sharp. “I knew Ava,” she whispered as I sat beside her bed. “And I knew what Sophie did.” “Will you tell me?” She nodded, slowly. “Sophie pushed her,” she said, each word like gravel. “Not physically. But psychologically. Day after day. She isolated Ava. Gaslit her. Turned everyone against her. Until the girl broke.” My hands curled into fists. “She was my patient. I tried to intervene. I filed reports. But Sophie had connections. People who owed her. People afraid of her.” Melinda coughed, blood staining the tissue she held. “But I have the files. The tapes. Her journal. It’s all in my storage unit. And it’s yours… if you promise to destroy Sophie.” I looked her in the eye. “I’m not stopping until Sophie Mitchell is nothing but a cautionary tale.” And in that moment, something inside me shifted. No more doubts. No more fear. Sophie wasn’t just my husband’s lover or a master manipulator. She was a predator. And I wasn’t just a betrayed wife anymore. I was the reckoning she never saw coming.
Jane JamesAuthor’s note She’s no longer the victim. She’s the storm coming to expose it all
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