99 Crimes, Countless Blessings — and None of Them Were Mine Chapter 07
Dad stepped back.
“That’s a lie!”
The old man raised his tear-streaked face.
“Mr. Sinclair, every member of your family signed the blood covenant.”
The Judge moved one hand.
A yellowed contract appeared above the court.
My parents’ bloody fingerprints stood at the top.
Below them were the names of my three brothers and Ruby.
I stared at the writing, my soul going cold.
They had known all along.
Adrian signed again before taking control of the foundation. Julian signed before becoming an attorney. Ethan signed before entering medical school.
On Ruby’s sixth birthday, she pressed her own blood over my name.
She could already read.
She had smiled and asked Mom, “Once I do this, all of Nora’s good luck becomes mine, right?”
“I was a child!” Ruby cried.
The Judge gave a cold laugh.
“She was five when she took the blame for you. Wasn’t she a child?”
Ruby sobbed and threw herself at Mom.
Mom wrapped both arms around her.
I had seen that gesture too many times.
Even in the Court of the Dead, they only knew how to protect one another.
The Judge opened the Ledger of Souls.
“You took her blessings. Now you’ll take the suffering that came with them.”
Black light entered Adrian’s forehead.
The charity warehouse fire appeared around him.
This time, he was the one condemned by thousands and pinned facedown by police.
Handcuffs snapped around his wrists. He screamed that he had been framed.
The gavel fell, and Adrian dropped to his knees.
“I didn’t do it!”
“The evidence was fabricated!”
The Judge’s voice was ice.
“She said the same thing.”
A second beam of darkness entered Julian’s chest.
In the hotel room, his dead girlfriend opened her eyes.
Her bruised fingers closed around his throat.
Julian fought wildly.
“I didn’t mean to kill you!”
“I just lost control!”
The dead woman leaned close to his ear.
“Then why didn’t you save me?”
“Why did you let your sister spend twelve years in prison for you?”
With every question, another dark mark tightened around his neck.
His face quickly turned purple.
Mom begged the Judge to stop.
“He understands now! He knows what he did was wrong!”
A hollow ache opened in my chest.
When I had sobbed until I lost my voice in court, she asked for the maximum sentence.
Julian had suffered for only a few moments, and she could no longer bear it.
Ethan’s prized medical medals cracked apart.
He had falsified injury reports, diagnoses, and death certificates for the family.
Every false report became a scalpel and drove itself into his fingers.
He rolled across the floor, screaming.
“My hands!”
“I’m a doctor. You can’t destroy my hands!”
The Judge looked down at him.
“Weren’t twelve years enough for all of you to destroy her?”
Finally, he tore Ruby’s blessing plaque from the air.
Its surface shattered, revealing name after name.
The stray cat. Scholarship students. Children pulled from burning buildings. Maya Hart.
Every person I had helped.
Ruby screamed and reached for the plaque.
The golden light flowed around her and returned to my body strand by strand.
Warmth entered my soul.
I bent over and covered my face as bloody tears fell between my fingers.
Ruby crawled toward me on her knees.
“Nora, give me some.”
“I’ll die without them.”
The Judge crushed the last piece of false gold under his heel.
“You celebrated when she died.”
“Now it’s your turn.”
