Part 5
The arrest took place at exactly 7:00 PM that evening. Ethan had a contact in the department who notified him the moment the squad cars left the precinct. We didn't go to the house, but we didn't need to. The fallout was immediate, noisy, and beautifully public.
My parents lived in an affluent, gated community outside Denver where gossip traveled faster than light. Everyone knew everyone, and appearance was everything.
According to the neighborhood forum and a text from a sympathetic former neighbor who knew what I had suffered, two marked police cruisers pulled up to my parents' driveway with their lights flashing.
Madison was apparently in the middle of hosting a small dinner party with her high-society friends, trying to pretend that nothing had happened, trying to act as though she hadn't just destroyed her sister's life forty-eight hours prior.
When the officers knocked on the door, my father tried to bar them entry, threatening to sue the city and call the mayor. But the officers didn't care about his empty threats. They had a signed warrant for felony aggravated assault and feticide.
They walked past him, entered the dining room, and ordered Madison to stand up.
The neighbor wrote that Madison screamed so loudly it could be heard down the street. She threw a wine glass at one of the officers, which only resulted in an additional charge of resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. They tackled her to the ground, forced her hands behind her back, and dragged her out of the house in handcuffs, barefoot and sobbing.
My mother ran down the driveway behind them, screaming at the top of her lungs that Emily was a liar, that Emily had tripped on purpose to ruin their family.
By the next morning, the local news outlets had caught wind of the story. A prominent attorney’s wife assaulted by her own sister, resulting in the loss of an unborn child. The headlines were brutal. Madison’s mugshot was broadcast across the morning news. She looked disheveled, her mascara smeared, her face twisted in a mixture of anger and disbelief.
Ethan sat at the kitchen table, sipping his coffee, watching the broadcast with a cold satisfaction.
"They tried to call three different top-tier defense attorneys last night," Ethan remarked, looking at his phone.
"How do you know?" I asked, sitting down across from him.
"Because those attorneys called me," Ethan said, a dark smile playing on his lips. "The legal community in Denver is tight-knit, Emily. Nobody wants to touch this case. Representing a girl who kicked her pregnant sister into a coffee table and killed a baby? It’s a career killer. I told them exactly what happened, and they all declined to take my father’s retainer."
Suddenly, a notification popped up on my laptop. It was an email from my father's personal account.
Emily, the email read. You have successfully disgraced us. Your mother is on medication, and Madison is sitting in a holding cell with criminals. I hope you are happy with yourself. We are cut off from our bank accounts because Ethan has filed some sort of fraudulent civil injunction. You are destroying the people who gave you life. Have some decency and put an end to this.
May you like
I pulled the laptop toward me, typed a three-word response, and closed the lid.
See you in court.
