Chapter 14 - Masks Slipping
The Surgical Intensive Care Unit was quiet, save for the rhythmic, mechanical hiss of ventilators and the occasional low chime of heart rate monitors. The smell of antiseptic was stronger here, masking the metallic tang of dried blood.
Marcus and I were allowed through the security doors after Detective Vance spoke with the head charge nurse. Paige was in Bed 4, isolated behind a glass sliding partition.
Seeing my sister like that took the breath out of my lungs.
Her head was wrapped in heavy white gauze, with a small drainage tube snaking out from beneath the bandage into a plastic reservoir. Her face was swollen and purple from the impact of the steering wheel, her left eye completely bruised shut. An IV pump clicked continuously by her bedside, feeding fluids and painkillers into her bruised forearm. She looked small, fragile, and utterly broken—nothing like the smug, entitled golden child who had slammed my apartment door three months ago while demanding I finance her lifestyle.
As Marcus and I stepped into the room, her good eye fluttered open. She blinked against the low light, groaning through cracked, swollen lips.
"Marcus...?" she croaked, her voice barely a whisper.
Marcus didn't move toward the bed. He stayed back near the door, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jacket. The look on his face wasn't anger; it was an unbearable, bone-deep exhaustion.
"I'm here, Paige," Marcus said quietly.
Her gaze shifted slowly across the room until it found me. Tears welled up in her single uninjured eye, spilling over the bruised bridge of her nose and catching in the corners of her mouth.
"Jake..." she sobbed, the sound muffled by the oxygen cannula under her nose. "I'm so sorry... I’m so sorry..."
I walked slowly to the edge of the bed, stopping just out of her reach. "Are you sorry because you almost died tonight, Paige? Or are you sorry because Trent cut a deal with the state police before your anesthesia even wore off?"
Paige closed her eyes, a shudder running through her broken frame. She began to cry in earnest, her shoulders trembling under the thin hospital blanket. The monitor above her head spiked, the digital numbers ticking upward from eighty to ninety-five.
"Mom told me... she told me Marcus hid money during the divorce," Paige wept, her voice cracked and raw. "She said he had hundreds of thousands in offshore accounts that belonged to me. She said Trent knew how to get it back... she introduced me to him, Jake. Mom set up the whole thing."
Marcus let out a dry, humorless laugh from the corner of the room. "Mom introduced you? You told me you met Trent at a real estate seminar in Chicago."
Paige shook her head weakly on the pillow, wincing in agony from the movement. "No... Trent was Mom’s business partner from twelve years ago. The guy who helped her hide Dad’s life insurance payout before probate. When you asked for a divorce, Marcus, Mom called him immediately. She said we couldn't let you walk away with the family assets."
The truth hit me like a physical blow. Dad’s life insurance. When our father died a decade ago, Mom had claimed that the policy had lapsed due to non-payment, leaving us with nothing but a mountain of medical debt. I had worked three jobs in college to keep our family afloat, skipping meals and running myself into the ground, while Paige received a brand-new car for her eighteenth birthday funded by an 'anonymous family friend.'
"She lied about Dad's money, too?" I asked, my voice dangerously low.
"There was six hundred thousand dollars," Paige whispered, unable to look me in the eye. "Mom kept four hundred thousand. She gave Trent fifty thousand to set up the shell companies, and she used the rest to buy my apartment and pay off my credit cards. But Trent lost it all in crypto day-trading last year. He was desperate. Mom was desperate. That’s why she needed your name, Jake. She knew your credit was spotless. She knew you had pre-approval for that mortgage."
"So you were going to ruin my life to cover up a decade of your own fraud?" I leaned over the bed rail, my shadow falling over her battered face. "You came to my apartment, Paige. You sat on my couch. You cried to me about how Marcus abandoned you, knowing full well that you were sleeping with Trent and helping Mom forge my signature on commercial loans!"
"I wanted to stop!" Paige cried, her hand reaching out desperately, trying to grasp my sleeve. "I swear to God, Jake, I told Mom tonight that I couldn't do it! When the foreclosure hit the lake house, Trent packed the lockboxes and told me we were driving to Canada. I told him no. That’s why we were arguing in the car! I tried to grab the steering wheel to pull over... that’s why we went off the road!"
"It doesn't matter why you crashed, Paige," Marcus interrupted, stepping forward to the foot of the bed. His voice was steady, devoid of the warmth he used to shower her with. "What matters is what happens tomorrow. Detective Vance has the safe deposit keys. He has Trent’s confession. And he has your mother in custody right downstairs."
Paige froze, her tear-streaked face going completely pale. "Mom... is arrested?"
"Handcuffed and booked," I said. "And as soon as the doctors clear you from this bed, Paige, you’re being transferred to the county detention center. Trent already signed an affidavit naming you as a co-conspirator in the grand larceny of Marcus’s family heirlooms."
"Marcus, please!" Paige pleaded, her voice cracking as panic took over. "Don't let them send me to prison! You loved me! We were married for seven years! Tell them it was a misunderstanding! Tell them you gave me those coins!"
Marcus looked down at the woman he had loved, the woman who had torn his life to pieces without a single second thought.
May you like
"I did love you, Paige," Marcus said, his voice quiet, filled with an ancient, settled grief. "I loved the woman I thought you were. But that woman never existed. She was just a mask your mother built to extract whatever she could from the people around her. And tonight, the mask finally slipped."
Marcus turned on his heel and walked out of the room, letting the heavy door slide shut behind him with a soft, final click.
