Chapter 4 - The Snake’s Last Strike
Three days later, the war moved from the basement to the courtrooms.
Marcus and Evelyn Vane were not going down without a fight. The Vane family empire was worth over two hundred million dollars, and within seventy-two hours, they had hired the most expensive defense team in the state—led by Arthur Vance, an infamous attorney known for getting monsters off on technicalities.
While I was still recovering in the hospital, Vance held a press conference on the courthouse steps.
"My clients, Marcus and Evelyn Vane, are victims of a orchestrated smear campaign," Vance announced smoothly to dozens of news cameras. "Mrs. Vane has a documented history of severe post-partum psychosis and self-harming tendencies. The so-called 'cage' in the basement was a specialized, secure sensory-deprivation enclosure requested by Mrs. Vane herself during her mental episodes. My client was attempting to protect his wife from hurting herself."
I watched the broadcast from my hospital television screen, shaking with pure rage. They were trying to spin my torture as mental illness.
An hour later, my hospital room door opened, and Agent Cross walked in accompanied by a sharp-looking woman in a charcoal suit.
"Sarah, this is District Attorney Rachel Vance—no relation to Marcus's lawyer," Cross said. "She’s taking your case."
"They're calling me crazy," I said, my voice trembling. "They're telling the media I put myself in that cage!"
"Let them talk," Rachel Vance said coldly, pulling out a thick manila folder. "They're digging their own graves. They don't know what we have yet. But before we go to trial, Sarah, there's something you need to know about Marcus's past."
She slid a photo across my bed tray. It showed a beautiful, smiling young woman with dark hair.
"Who is she?" I asked.
"Her name was Elena," Rachel explained. "Six years ago, before Marcus met you, Elena was his fiancée. She mysteriously vanished two weeks before their wedding. Marcus claimed she ran off with a lover in Europe. Her body was never found."
My breath caught in my throat. "You think he..."
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"We checked the basement floor logs," Agent Cross interjected. "Ground-penetrating radar picked up disturbed soil beneath the concrete slab right next to where your cage was placed. We got a search warrant yesterday morning. Sarah... we found Elena's remains buried four feet below where you were trapped."
A chilling silence settled over the room. Marcus hadn't just turned the basement into my grave—he had already built one there six years ago. He was a serial predator, and I had been living above a graveyard.
