CHAPTER 4 â THE SECOND FRAME-UP
The guards found Emily standing over Daniel Brooksâ body.
Blood on her hands.
Blood on her prison uniform.
A dead man at her feet.
History had repeated itself perfectly.
"Step away from the body!"
Emily raised her shaking hands.
"I didnât do this!"
One guard laughed coldly.
"Thatâs exactly what you said the first time."
Within hours, every inmate in Graystone knew.
Emily Carter had been accused of killing again.
The warden arrived before sunrise.
Warden Helen Voss was a sharp-faced woman with silver hair and eyes that never blinked.
She stood outside Emilyâs isolation cell and smiled.
"Youâre unlucky, Mrs. Carter."
Emily stared back.
"No. Iâm being hunted."
The wardenâs smile disappeared.
"Careful."
Emily stepped closer to the bars.
"Daniel was going to confess."
Voss leaned in.
"Dead men donât confess."
That was when Emily understood.
The prison wasnât just a cage.
It was part of the cover-up.
Later that night, Emily remembered Danielâs final words.
"Your brother wasnât the mastermind..."
Her brother.
Thomas Reed.
The man who had taken in her son after she went to prison.
The man who had cried at her sentencing.
The man she had trusted with the last piece of her heart.
Emilyâs stomach twisted.
If Thomas was involved...
Then what had happened to her son?
In the prison laundry room, while guards searched for evidence against her, Emily noticed something under a broken tile.
A small black button.
Not from a prison uniform.
Not from Danielâs clothes.
It was polished.
Expensive.
And engraved with two tiny letters:
H.V.
Helen Voss.
Emily hid it in her sleeve just as the guards returned.
For the first time in ten years...
She had evidence.
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But evidence inside Graystone Prison meant nothing if she couldnât get it outside.
END OF CHAPTER 4
