Chapter 108 Justice at Last
Chapter 108 Justice at Last
At that exact moment, Emma's brother phone buzzed with CCTV footage, a shadowy figure seen fiddling around the cars in the garage. The grainy clip looped and looped, each frame a nail. Panic rose in his throat like bile.
“I’ve given you enough hints,” the voice on the phone said. “Now, if you can, try to save yourself.....Hurry up!.”
He hung up, and the shriek that left her throat was half-anguish, half-raw fury.
“What are we going to do?!” her brother wailed, words tumbling into the small space. “Are we going to--”
“Shut up and think!” Emma screamed back, sweating as if the car had become a sauna of regret. Her hands shook. Her breaths were shallow and fast. A knot tightened around her ribs and made every movement feel like traversing ice.
“Call the police! Tell them to save us!” her brother urged, voice cracking.
“Are you mad?!” she hissed. “They’ll arrest us the moment they catch us!”
“Then do you want to die here, in this car?!” he shouted, pounding at the front drawer in helpless fury. “No-- no! Why are the police following us? Drive faster!”
“Shut the hell up! I’m thi----”
“Don’t press the brake! Just drive straight toward the cottage!” her brother screamed at her.
“And you think we can escape that way? They’ll catch us no matter where we go!”
For a breathless minute they argued like two drowning people grasping at the same driftwood, claws scrabbling for any hope. She thought of her brother, of the network of protection she’d always relied on. She thought of prison and how easily his support could evaporate, leaving her to the very people she’d mistreated. Fear tightened her chest until logic was a distant shore. Her foot hovered above the pedal as if poised between two fatal truths.
At last she made a choice. She couldn’t face another prison sentence, she couldn’t imagine a life where the shields around her name fell away and the people she had used turned their backs. Her foot went down on the brake.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?! STOP!” her brother screamed, voice raw with panic.
Her palms slick with sweat, she braced herself for whatever consequence her action would bring, an end she expected would be ugly, inevitable, mortal even. Then, with a sound like surrender, she pressed the brake fully and let herself be taken by the consequences she had spent a lifetime trying to outrun.
______________
When he hung up the phone and turned away, satisfied, he froze. She was standing in the doorway, pale as the light behind her, eyes impossibly wide.
“So that’s what you’ve been doing for the past few weeks?” she said, the accusation low but fierce.
He moved as if struck, stepping forward with a quick, practiced calm. “No, you’ve got it all wrong,” he said, voice steady. “For the past few weeks I’ve been meeting with other politician, her brother's enemies, and rivals, asking them to hand over everything they had on him. In return, I promised future support.”
She frowned, suspicion knitting her brow. “Then what about her car? Did you--?”
“I didn’t do that,” he cut in. “Kevin went there, but he didn’t tamper with their brakes. I only needed footage to scare them. The brakes are fine. Kevin knows nothing about cars, he was just pretending to be messing with the vehicle. He was making noise.”
Confusion clouded her features, deeper now. “Then why are you lying to her?”
He allowed a small, almost wry smile to form. “Because it’s her choice. If she presses the brake, the police will be there to arrest her the moment the car stops, because now there’s enough evidence to take her. Her brother’s position is weaker than she believes. I’ve secured the support of many of her brother's rivals, it’ll be easy to put them behind bars once the cameras run and the arrests begin. If she doesn't brakes on the main road, she’ll pay for everything today, if she keeps driving, she’ll face a different kind of reckoning. Either way, she pays.”
Her silence was a physical thing; she blinked as tears gathered and then fell, fragile confessions in miniature.
“Are you really okay doing this to her?” she whispered. “What if something happens to her? She was your---”
“She isn’t,” he interrupted, the answer coming with a flatness that had no room for mercy. “She wasn’t my mother. The girl she bore, she wasn’t loved as a mother should love. I was a pawn in her plan to secure the Fraser's name. Once she had what she wanted, she discarded anyone who didn’t serve her purpose. She would have done the same to me. Countless lives have suffered because of her appetite for power, my relatives, your parents, my grandmother. They deserve justice. I don’t feel guilt for what’s coming because justice is what she’s owed.”
They turned together to the television just in time to see rolling footage of flashing lights and officers converging on the mansion. The anchors’ voices described arrests in progress, the mayor and the woman who had once thought herself untouchable were being led away.
Relief unfurled in Rainee's heart like a tentative flag. She laughed then, sharp, incredulous, unable to keep the tremor out of it. He had frightened her with the idea of an imminent wreck for nothing, and yet the outcome was what she had hoped for,consequences finally catching up.
“How can you even think like that?” she asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her close, eyes locking on hers in a way that made her breath catch. “Do you forget I’m a Fraser for a reason?” he said softly, pride and warning braided together in the same sentence.
________
One month later
The courthouse smelled of dust and bleach, the kind of sterile air that always tried and failed to hide the residue of countless human dramas. Alex and Rainee had come to that place not for spectacle but to close a wound that had festered for decades. The verdict had already landed like a slab of ice, life sentences for the woman who had made so many lives into collateral. As they turned to leave, a raw sound cut through the murmurs, a frantic, familiar voice tearing out of its throat.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t you know who I am? I’m Emma Fraser… the owner of the Frasers! Leave me!” the voice shrieked, every consonant jagged with panic.
Officers guided her forward, their grips firm but professional, while the stunned hush of the crowd pressed in from all sides. She pushed and clawed at the uniforms like a trapped animal, every movement born of a terror that had nothing to do with dignity and everything to do with survival.
When she caught sight of them approaching, Alex steady, Rainee beside him, her features twisted into a fragile, practiced smile, the kind that had convinced so many once before.
“See, he is my son… he wil--” she began, the lie sticking and fraying as she tried to stitch it into pleading.
To be continued