99 Crimes, Countless Blessings — and None of Them Were Mine Chapter 08
A mirror of dark water lit up above the Court of the Dead.
The livestream from the memorial chapel was still running.
The soul tablet, the blood covenant, and every word spoken in court were broadcast to the living
world.
For one second, the comment feed stopped.
Then question marks flooded the screen.
[So every crime was planted by the Sinclairs?]
[They sacrificed their own daughter and stole the credit for her good deeds?]
[They drove Maya Hart to her death too!]
Dad lunged at the water mirror.
“Turn it off!”
“You can’t broadcast this!”
The Judge backhanded him across the floor.
“You used the praise of thousands to bind her soul.”
“Now those same people will see exactly what you are.”
Reporters rushed into the chapel’s private back room.
They filmed the blessing plaques, the black soul tablet, and the soul-binding seals.
The original footage of Julian killing his girlfriend emerged from the Ledger of Souls and uploaded directly into the police evidence database.
Ethan’s forged diagnoses and Adrian’s edited videos were restored one after another.
Victims packed the street outside the foundation.
They held photographs and demanded justice for their daughters and the money that had been
stolen.
People who had once praised the Sinclairs smashed the family’s bronze charity statue.
Dad clutched his chest.
“The Sinclairs are finished…”
He never looked at me.
Even now, the first thing he mourned was the Sinclair name.
The Judge lifted the blood covenant and dropped it into judgment fire.
Flames crawled across my parents’ fingerprints.
Mom screamed and hit the floor.
She was dragged into my memories.
The crying infant. The door left closed. The paddle striking skin. The acceptance letter ripping
apart.
Every sensation flooded her body.
She became me at five, ordered away from the dining table.
She became me at twelve, kneeling onstage and confessing to theft.
She became the adult me, listening while her own mother demanded the harshest sentence.
Finally, she lay in the memorial chapel and watched her mother press a soul-binding seal to her
forehead.
Mom rolled on the floor.
“It hurts!”
“Nora, it hurts!”
I stood over her, my fingers trembling.
When I was little, I had cried for her the same way.
She always told me to endure it. It would be over soon.
I crouched and repeated her own words.
“It’ll be over soon.”
“Once you endure it, you’ll have taken another disaster for the family.”
Her sobbing stopped in her throat.
Mom reached for me, but her fingers passed through my soul.
“I was wrong.”
“Give me one more chance. I’ll hold you. I’ll get you medicine. I’ll send you to school”
My nose burned, but I didn’t move closer.
“The five-year-old me already waited for that second chance.”
“She waited until she died.”
Dad lifted his head.
His shoulders seemed to collapse all at once.
“Nora, I’ll give you the company.”
“Everything the Sinclairs own will be yours.”
The Judge cut him off with a bitter laugh.
“What could you possibly give her that would repay a life?”
In the water mirror, Sinclair Group stock went into free fall. The foundation’s accounts were frozen. Police led all three brothers away.
Ruby hid behind Mom and pleaded with me.
“I don’t want anything anymore.”
“Take every blessing back. Just let me go home.”
I looked at the small scar beside her eyebrow.
That scar had crushed me for nearly thirty years.
Now the truth had finally been restored.
The record of sins opened by itself.
[Ruby Sinclair: Knowingly claimed ninety-nine good deeds as her own and participated in the
inding of another soul.]
Her name turned bloodred.
Underworld guards stepped forward and locked an iron chalti around her neck.
Mom threw herself over Ruby.
I watched the familiar movement.
The last trace of warmth inside me went cold.
She kept saying she loved me.
But the moment disaster came, she still held only Ruby.
