Chapter 2: The Perfect Mother
Two NYPD detectives arrived within minutes.
Detective Lena Ortiz entered first, followed by Detective Aaron Walsh. They separated everyone immediately.
Victoria demanded an attorney.
Ethan demanded answers.
Emily asked only for water.
Sarah held a straw to her lips while Victoria was escorted into the hallway.
“She was helping me breathe,” Victoria insisted loudly. “That video has been misunderstood.”
Detective Ortiz stopped beside the bed.
“Mrs. Montgomery, are you able to give a statement?”
Emily looked toward Daniel.
He gave a slight nod.
“Yes.”
Her voice remained faint, but every word was deliberate.
“My mother-in-law placed the pillow over my face. She said I should have died in the fall.”
Ortiz wrote it down.
“Did she mention your husband?”
Emily hesitated.
Ethan stood across the room with both hands pressed against his forehead.
“She said she was doing him a favor.”
Ethan looked up.
“I didn’t know she was going to do this.”
Emily studied him.
“That isn’t what I was asked.”
The words struck him harder than an accusation.
Ortiz continued.
“What do you remember about the balcony fall?”
Emily closed her eyes.
The memory returned in fragments.
Ethan’s hand around her wrist.
The unsigned insurance documents on the table.
Victoria entering quietly.
The railing bending beneath Emily’s weight.
And Ethan’s expression just before she fell.
Not rage.
Not satisfaction.
Fear.
“I remember the railing breaking,” Emily said. “I believe it was deliberately weakened.”
Walsh looked toward Daniel.
“Have you examined the property?”
“Our team photographed the balcony before the family’s attorneys locked down the townhouse,” Daniel said. “Two bolts had been partially cut.”
Victoria’s voice rose from the hallway.
“That house is more than a hundred years old!”
Daniel walked to the door.
“Metal doesn’t cut itself.”
Ethan lowered himself into a chair.
“My mother wouldn’t—”
Emily interrupted him.
“She just tried to suffocate me in front of a hidden camera.”
He looked at her, devastated.
Emily felt no satisfaction.
She had once loved Ethan’s gentleness.
Now she wondered whether it had ever been gentleness at all.
Perhaps it had merely been weakness dressed in a softer suit.
Detective Ortiz closed her notebook.
“We’re taking Victoria Montgomery into custody for attempted murder.”
A sudden commotion erupted outside.
Victoria pulled away from an officer and pointed directly at Ethan.
“You ungrateful fool,” she shouted. “Everything I did was for you.”
The room went silent.
Ethan stared at his mother.
May you like
Emily watched his face.
That single sentence had frightened him more than the arrest.
