CHAPTER 501: WHAT A FAMILY! (2)

Even as the verdict was read, there was no relief from the listeners; some were on the fence, and others were happy.

"Life sentence?"

"What did you expect? A day in prison? She is lucky to get away with her life! What kind of person attempts to kill her best friend? Do you know that she should be glad that her friend was saved in time, or she would have been facing a murder charge! To think that the poor girl looked to her as a best friend! Don’t even get me started on her other crimes!"

Brianna never spoke a word throughout the proceedings. She didn’t plead. Even when she was handcuffed off the courthouse, she just followed like a puppet.

Another memory surfaced from when she was about eight or nine years old, standing in her new shoes, the same colour as the blood that flowed in the cold cellar beneath their house, the scent of bleach and old blood in the air. Her mother stood over a body ... the person twitched, showing that he was not quite dead, and said in the calmest voice:

"If you flinch now, you’ll flinch when it matters. And if you flinch when it matters, you’ll die. Do you want to die, darling?"

Brianna had shaken her head. Her mother smiled and handed her the knife.

"Then don’t look away. And do it properly."

That night, she didn’t cry. Her mother had kissed her forehead afterwards, smoothed her hair back, and whispered:

"You were born for this. The world chews on sheep. We eat wolves."

Brianna frowned, wondering where that memory came from and how she had forgotten.

In her cell, Abi smiled wryly, looking at her daughter on the screen, haggard and unlike herself.

Coincidentally, Abi was also thinking of the same series of memories.

That was when she remembered,

"Hmm ... that was the only time Abram ever truly raised his voice at me," She muttered to the empty cell that had become her home for a few days.

It was the night after the cellar - the first time she had let Brianna see some of the things she did.

"This is the truth in its rawest form."

Abi had concluded then, but Brianna did not speak for hours after that. She just sat at the kitchen table, still as a corpse, eyes wide and trembling.

And then Abram directed his wrath and anger towards her.

"Why would you let her see something like that?" he roared, voice cracking at the edges. "She’s a child! She had blood on her hands, for God’s sake, Abi! What were you thinking?!"

Abi didn’t flinch, though she was surprised as that was the first ever time that Abram had raised his voice.

"Face it," she said, calmly. "This is our life. And she’ll grow into it whether you want her to or not."

"No, Abi. No, this is your life. I may have tolerated it, but I didn’t sign my daughter up for it. She is my princess and would remain so!" His voice broke then ... not out of weakness, but sheer frustration.

"The only reason I’m still here is because I love you, for who you are and not for what you do.... But don’t you dare drag our daughter down into this hell."

But Abi already had. It was not something one could just turn away from and Abi had no indications that she wanted to do that. She decided to change her approach instead. Abram was right, it was hard to find someone who loved you for who you actually were. Abi had been in that line of business for as long as she remembered, and certain actions of hers were just necessary for the tasks ahead.

The couple hadn’t seen eye to eye for days after that. Their home, once dimly quiet, became steeped in dread.

It did not help that Brianna began waking up screaming in the middle of the night after that, her cries raw and unrelenting. She spoke of hands reaching from the dark, of blood that wouldn’t wash off, of eyes watching from corners that no one else could see. It was pitiful.

Eventually, desperate and broken, Abram, who could not stand his princess being that way, found a doctor willing to hypnotize the memory out of Brianna. It worked—on the surface. The nightmares dulled. The cries stopped.

But Abi never stopped.

Abram knew but let her be, in so far as what she did, did not disrupt Brianna’s day-to-day. He rather indulged Brianna to a ridiculous level so that she grew up to understand that she could take anything she desired.

Abi changed her methods, made them softer, subtler. Small hints instead of scenes. Whispers instead of commands. Games that weren’t really games, and stories that taught her to close her heart instead of open it. Abi’s training made Briann feel like she owned the world and everyone else was beneath her feet.

And so, over time, the path was laid brick by quiet brick ... until Brianna no longer needed to be shown. She began walking it herself.

***

"Did I do the right thing?" Abram asked himself as he also watched his beloved daughter walk off the courthouse to a jail, where she was to spend the rest of her life. Unlike them, Brinna had closed her heart. The lesson that Ian had taught her was deeply ingrained, as well as the betrayal she felt from her parents. What hurt her the most was that, in all the time that she felt so much despair, she had been in her parents’ establishment?

She had seen a couple of days that a certain Don Vino had visited for brief meetings, during her captivity, and to learn that this was her mother? This was a hard pill to swallow for her. She knew many things, but to protect her, other details of her mother’s trade had been kept away from her, including this little fact. To Brainna, she was done with them.

Abi and Abram’s trial took place a few days afterwards, and the case round-up went surprisingly well to the detectives’ surprise. They faced no resistance at all.

What did she have to live for now? Given that her daughter had been convicted. To Abi, it only meant that she had not been able to do her duty to protect her.

Abi asked herself that every morning when the lights buzzed on in her cell and the day began in its colourless routine – a life she had started imagining for herself. Not out of despair, but out of calculation, like she had done with every single thing in her life.

Unknowingly, Abram was of the same view as her. Abram’s single anchor in his life had been his daughter. And now, with her gone, they were both ghosts trapped in separate cages. He hadn’t tried to run. He hadn’t fought the arrest. When they came for him, he simply went along.

Their arms and legs, in terms of their connections, were cut off, so they did not resist.

The police hadn’t expected that. They had prepared every trick in the book. Evans had done his research on the interrogation techniques that had been proven to work - sleep deprivation, mirrored rooms, false timelines, psychological warfare.

They knew who they were dealing with: a woman who had evaded justice for years, for not even being known! ... Operating in silence while people disappeared beneath society’s nose. A woman trained in manipulation, obedience, and dominance.

But instead, the case unravelled like a thread pulled from a seam. It went without resistance.

Abi confessed, just like that.

She did not shout. Her face was devoid of any emotions. She simply sat across from the Leon and listed names, dates, places. Her voice was calm, measured, as if she were reading from a script.

She gave them so many details that it was overwhelming.

They thought it was a trap. A simple trick to create a backdoor for themselves. They doubled down, expecting her to turn, to twist something, to exploit their desperation.

But Abi didn’t, and neither did Abram.

With their combined testimonies, they had given Leon all he needed on the complexities of the drug trade that they led. Apparently, James Wendover was just one of her minions, but brilliant and resourceful enough to be in her circles and to be of almost equal rank. Abi’s thugs were stationed off the island, and that kind of explained Brianna’s issue, though not to its tiniest detail.

Leon did not sit still, and large forces were deployed, as the names she whispered turned into real people pulled from the shadows - hidden in plain sight, some even working in the same departments, and the people leading the investigation. It became clear just how deep her roots had gone.

The confession was complete. Her network crumbled in an instant by her own hand, but Abi did not flinch.

’I hope this will help atone for my actions.’

Abram, on the other hand, earned a reputation as a fool for love! He was an accomplice in everything.

The trio’s case would come to be recorded in criminal manuals for years to come as well as law books to be studied. The couple would go on to spend their entire lives in the harshest prison available for the rest of their life.

What a family indeed!

Abi would sometimes think of where she had erred. Was it so bad that she wanted the world for her daughter? Should she have stopped her daughter’s actions? Many what-ifs run through her mind with no answer. One wondered what she would have done if she knew the whole ’punishment’ that Brianna had endured.

That aside, Abi knew one thing for sure – Ian Thornston was not to be trifled with... but knowing and understanding were two separate things. How could she not see what had happened? The world believed that Ian Thornston was comatose, but the very action and their family’s issue told Abi otherwise, and she was right. Abi would from time to time smile wryly,

"Ian Thornston is cruel!"

... but one would wonder, ’Who caused it?’

*********

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