Chapter 7 - MY SISTER CALLED ME FROM JAIL TO BEG—AND I TOLD HER EXACTLY WHAT SHE COULD DO WITH HER APOLOGIES**
Three days later, the jail called.
Collect.
Celia.
I almost didn’t answer.
But something made me pick up.
“Elise?” Her voice was small, broken, nothing like the woman who’d slapped me across the face in front of Washington’s elite. “Oh, God, Elise, thank you. I thought you’d never talk to me. I need you to listen to me—please—they’re saying I could get twenty years. Twenty years! I can’t go to prison, Elise. I’ll die in there. You have to help me. Tell them it was all Dad and Nolan. Tell them I was just following orders. That I was scared. That they made me do it. Please, Elise. You’re my sister. You have to help me.”
She was crying now, real, ugly sobs.
“Celia,” I said, my voice flat. “You slapped me because I wouldn’t let you steal $14 million from disabled veterans. You helped Dad forge my name on a life insurance policy so you could collect $5 million when I died in some fake combat accident. You laughed at the emails where you talked about how stupid the donors were. You called the veterans ‘broken losers’ who didn’t deserve the money. I read them all, Celia. Every single one.”
She stopped crying. Just for a second. Then she started again, louder, more desperate.
“I was young! I was stupid! Nolan manipulated me! Dad manipulated me! You don’t know what it was like, living in your shadow! You were the perfect one—the soldier, the hero, Mom’s favorite! I had to earn their love! I had to do whatever they said or they wouldn’t love me anymore! It’s not my fault! It’s yours! If you’d just been normal—if you’d just stayed home and been a daughter like I was—none of this would have happened!”
The blame shifted so fast it would have been impressive if it hadn’t been so pathetic.
I sat in the hospital bed, holding the phone, and felt the last tiny flicker of love I’d ever had for my sister die.
“You want to know what I think, Celia?” I said quietly. “I think you loved the money. The parties. The dresses. The diamonds. You loved being the rich Warren daughter. And you hated that I was the one who got our mother’s respect without having to lie or cheat or steal for it. You didn’t do it because Dad made you. You did it because you wanted to. Because you thought you deserved it. Because you thought you were better than the veterans you were stealing from. Better than me.”
I paused.
“I’m not testifying against you at trial,” I said.
She gasped, hopeful. “Really? Oh, Elise, thank you—thank you—”
“I’m not testifying,” I cut her off, “because the FBI has everything. Your emails. Your texts. Nolan’s testimony. The forged documents. The insurance policy. They don’t need me. You’re going down, Celia. Hard. And whatever sentence you get? It’s less than you deserve. You want to know who the real broken losers are? The men and women you stole from who can’t feed their kids because you needed a new Birkin bag. The widows who couldn’t pay their mortgages because you needed a vacation in Saint-Tropez. The kids who couldn’t afford college because you needed a $400,000 ring.”
My voice dropped to a whisper.
“You’re not my sister anymore. You haven’t been for a long time. I hope you get every single day of those twenty years. And when you get out? Don’t ever try to contact me again. As far as I’m concerned, you died the night you slapped me and called me unstable to cover your own crimes.”
I hung up.
I blocked the number.
I handed the phone back to the nurse.
May you like
And for the first time since I was a little girl, I didn’t feel guilty about choosing myself over my family.
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