Part 4 — Catherine mockingly invited me to her own party, but when I appeared, the glass slipped from her hand and the guests fell silent

Behind the door stood investigator Levan and two police officers.

Catherine looked at them and for the first time could not think of what to say.

“This is my house,” she finally uttered.

“Not only yours anymore,” Levan calmly answered. “We have a temporary court order.”

Catherine looked at Daniel.

“Call my lawyer.”

Daniel took out his phone, but after the second call his expression changed.

“He is not answering?”

“He is answering,” he said. “He simply no longer wants to represent you.”

Catherine snatched the phone from his hand.

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. He himself told me that the case was no longer a legal dispute. It is a criminal case.”

Catherine walked around the room. Her heels tapped evenly on the floor, but now the sound resembled panic rather than power.

“Monica, we can negotiate.”

“We have already negotiated.”

“You have nothing. Neither money, nor a name, nor experience.”

“You yourself gave me time to obtain everything.”

Levan placed the recorder on the table.

“Mrs. Prescott, please sit down.”

“I will not sit down.”

“Then while standing, you will have to listen to your own voice.”

He turned on the recording.

Catherine’s voice sounded in the room:

“Monica will understand nothing. We will transfer the money tomorrow.”

Then we heard her second recording:

“If this girl finds my father’s documents, I will make her disappear the way I made her mother disappear.”

Catherine froze.

I stood by the chair and listened to my own breathing.

Hearing the voice was different. Before I heard the recording, her words were only a threat to me. Now they walked around the room as living beings and returned to Catherine herself.

“I did not say that,” she whispered.

Levan turned the voice on again.

“I will leave Monica in the basement. No one will find her there.”

Catherine covered her ears with her hands.

“Turn it off!”

“That is your voice,” I said.

For the first time she looked at me not from above, but from below.

“I was simply afraid.”

“I was afraid too.”

“My father would have left everything to you.”

“But you stole everything.”

The police officers put handcuffs on her. Catherine no longer resisted. Only when she crossed the threshold of the door did she say to me:

“You will not endure this house. Every wall here is mine.”

I looked behind her.

“No. Only your noise was here.”

That same evening the house was emptied for the first time.

Drops of champagne left in the guests’ glasses quietly gleamed. A large mirror hung at the top of the stairs, in which my black dress was visible. The dress cost two million, but that night its price meant nothing. I wore it only to prove that a person cannot define someone’s place by humiliating them.

I went down to the basement.

The door of my room was open.

The narrow bed was no longer there. The walls had been cleaned, and the belongings had been put into boxes. Only the old white cloth remained on the floor, the one Catherine had thrown at me at breakfast.

I picked up the cloth and looked at it for a long time.

I was not happy about her arrest.

I only felt that this time I no longer needed to clean her room.

Three days later the court froze the foundation accounts. The investigation confirmed that Catherine had transferred the children’s clinic funds into personal accounts for seven years. My mother’s recording also reopened the old accident case.

I answered every question.

I hid not a single word.

Catherine tried to contact me several times. First through a lawyer, then from Daniel’s phone.

“Give me only five minutes,” she told me once.

“I had five years in your house and did not give myself even one minute.”

“I was destroying your life, but you destroyed my life too.”

“I did not make your decisions.”

Silence fell.

Then she asked quietly:

“Are you still my sister?”

I closed my eyes.

“No, Catherine. I was your victim. Now I am your family’s heir, but I will no longer play the role of your sister.”

Six weeks later the management of the foundation was officially transferred to me.

The first decision was to return the frozen funds to the children’s clinic. The second was to completely renovate the basement of the house.

I had a window made.

I painted the walls a light color.

Instead of the narrow bed, I placed a small desk there, and on it I arranged my mother’s photograph and the metal recorder that had preserved the truth.

My daughter, Ana, was living with her aunt through all this and came only on weekends. At first I did not tell her where I worked. I was afraid that the smell of the basement and the locked doors would enter her dreams.

One evening, when the first snow could be seen through the window, Ana entered my new office.

“Mom, did you really sleep here before?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Most of the time.”

She looked at the key with the red bead lying on the desk.

“What does this open?”

I took the key in my hand.

“A door behind which the truth was hidden.”

Ana thought, then drew a small house on a sheet of paper. The house had large windows, and yellow light came from every window.

“This is our house,” she told me.

“Why does it have so many windows?”

“So that no one will ever need to hide again.”

Her words struck me more strongly than the court verdict.

In the following months life slowly, but truly, changed. In the morning I checked the clinic budgets. At noon I met doctors. In the evening I visited Ana and together we made cinnamon cookies.

For the first time I no longer woke at half past four.

For the first time I was not afraid of a knock on the door.

One morning, while snow was falling in the street, a message from an unknown number lit up my phone.

“Monica, I can fix everything. The house, the money, the foundation—everything will be returned to you if you come to me. Listen to me just once.”

Catherine’s name was written below.

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote a reply:

“I have lost nothing that needs to be returned. But you lost the person who protected you from your own crimes for far too long.”

I sent the message and blocked the number.

In the evening Ana was attaching her drawing to the wall in the former basement room, now a bright office. I put the old white cloth away in a drawer. I could not throw it away. It was no longer a symbol of my humiliation.

It reminded me of the day when I did not bow for the first time.

And I placed the key with the red bead on the windowsill, where a ray of sunlight fell directly on it.

Outside, snow was falling peacefully.

This time the door was open from the inside.