99 Crimes, Countless Blessings — and None of Them Were Mine Chapter 03
The Judge sat in an interrogation room.
A detective slid photographs across the table.
Photos showed Julian’s girlfriend unconscious on a hotel bed, with a silk scarf found around her neck.
“The security footage only shows you entering and leaving the room.”
“Her phone also contains threatening messages sent from your number.”
The Judge looked up sharply.
“Julian killed her!”
That night, Julian had gone too far while fooling around with her. Then he tricked me into bringing her asthma medication.
I knelt beside her and desperately tried to help.
My fingerprints and other traces were left throughout the scene.
Julian escaped through the emergency stairwell.
Adrian edited the security footage. Julian used my phone to send the messages.
In a single night, they built a case that led straight to my prison cell.
The interrogation-room door opened.
Julian walked in with red-rimmed eyes.
“I don’t want to believe my own sister did this.”
“But family can’t come before justice.”
The Judge jerked against the handcuffs so hard they rattled.
“Say that again.”
Dad handed investigators records of my supposed past offenses and said violence was simply in my nature.
Mom faced the cameras, sobbing so hard her shoulders shook.
“Please impose the harshest sentence the law allows.”
“Don’t show her special treatment just because she’s a Sinclair.”
The internet praised them.
[How does a family that good raise a monster like her?]
[They won’t even shield their own daughter. That’s what real integrity looks like.]
The Judge pushed himself upright, the cuffs cutting red lines into his wrists.
“I didn’t do it!”
“Why aren’t you investigating Julian?”
He shouted the same words again and again until his voice went raw.
I curled into the corner, my chest contracting with every slam of his hands against the table.
I had heard that sound too many times.
The more I explained, the more guilty I seemed.
The harder I cried, the more convinced they were that I was putting on an act.
The Judge kept pounding the table.
But I knew.
The moment my family branded me a monster, the truth stopped mattering.
Then Maya Hart stepped forward.
She was the girl whose scholarship money I had supposedly stolen.
She posted photos of the used textbooks I had given her, along with every money-transfer receipt between us.
“Nora didn’t steal anything.”
“She’s the reason I got to stay in school.”
A spark of hope appeared in the Judge’s eyes.
My soul shook as if I had been plunged into ice water.
“No…”
I lunged forward, screaming until my throat felt torn open.
“Don’t let her say anything else!”
“Please—make her stop!”
Heavy black mist poured from my transparent body and wrapped around my throat and limbs.
The Sinclair Foundation released a statement.
[The recipient has been manipulated for years by a convicted offender. Her testimony is not credible.]
Ruby cried on camera and asked why Maya would repay kindness with betrayal.
Maya’s school suspended her scholarship.
Someone splashed red paint across her front door. Her phone filled with messages calling her a murderer’s accomplice.
By the time I reached the rooftop, Maya was already standing outside the railing.
“No!”
I tried to grab her again and again.
My transparent hands passed straight through her wrists.
I turned, dropped to my knees before the Judge, and struck my forehead against the concrete.
“You’re the Judge of the Underworld.”
“Please save her.”
“I’ll take the blame. Send me to the deepest pit in Hell.”
The Judge pulled desperately against the chains. Black mist cut into his skin.
But no one could change a memory that had already happened.
Maya stepped back from the railing.
I lunged for her, but my hands passed straight through.
Before everything went dark, she whispered, “I believe you.”
When I looked down again, she was gone.
I stayed beside her, desperately wishing I could still reach her.
“Maya, the ground is cold.”
“Please. Get up.”
A tearing heat ripped through my eyes.
Tears streamed down my face as I knelt beside her, helpless.
I was already a ghost.
Yet my blood truly mixed with hers.
She never opened her eyes again.
That evening, Mom told reporters through her tears that I had forced Maya to give false testimony.
The record of sins turned another page.
[Manipulated a scholarship recipient into fabricating evidence, resulting in her death. Severity increased.]
The gavel fell.
I was sentenced to twelve years.
Beneath a storm of applause, the Sinclair family’s blessing plaques blazed bright enough to hurt my eyes.
