The Vengeful Rebirth

Chapter3

Elina screamed for me to be stopped. As my fingers closed around the doorknob, sirens screamed.

Blue and red lights flooded the windows. Tires screeched loudly against the gravel. A familiar voice shouted outside.

“Police! Open up!” It was Officer Mark who had been coming to our house for an investigation.

I froze, my heart thumping loudly inside my rib cage. I turned around just as the door burst open. Officers in uniforms entered the room, their guns raised in a shooting motion.

“Matilda Hugdes?” Mark barked.

I nodded, blood draining from my face.

“You’re under arrest for the murders of Thomas, Lily, and Clara Wrenfield.”

I felt the room spinning.

“What—No! That’s a mistake. You've made a mistake!” My voice cracked as rough hands grabbed me, wrenching my hands behind me. “You don’t understand. I’ve been set up by my family. Joel, please tell them the truth! I didn’t do it!”

The cold metal cuffs snapped around my wrists.

“I told you to confess to the police yourself. Your father would hear about this once he gets back from France. He would be so disappointed,” Elina lamented pitifully like I was a prodigal child. I watched as they all looked unmoved as the officers dragged me.

Joel didn’t even glance at me. The people I called family stood behind him.

“You planned this,” I whispered. “Everything was orchestrated by you all.”

I kicked, screamed, and thrashed as they dragged me further away into their vehicle, begging them I was innocent. As we drove away, the sirens wailed, but this time, it sounded like a funeral dirge. It was like an accompaniment to my execution.

~

I sat cuffed to the table, fingers trembling and lips dry and cracked. The interrogation room smelled of metal and mold. I felt like a rabbit trying to hide away from wolves as two detectives stood in front of me.

“You still keep denying it after all the evidence? We have a witness who saw you fleeing the scene after the accident.” One said coldly. He looked oddly familiar but I couldn’t process where I had seen him.

“No,” I murmured. “I…I... I told you, it was Luisa. She did it drunkenly and told me to confess I did it.” I was screaming at this point, but it didn’t matter. I wanted to prove my innocence. My heart raced, trying to piece together where everything had gone so wrong. Or maybe nothing was right from the start.

“But we have footage of your car near the scene.”

“That’s not possible,” I snapped, frustrated. “I wasn’t driving that night. I wasn’t even near that—“

“We also have tire tracks that match your vehicle. And this is a witness sketch. It says you were speeding away.” He slid a photo across the table.

I stared at the drawing. The woman in the photo looked like her, but it wasn’t her.

“This isn’t me. This is Luisa.” My voice cracked with sadness. “Luisa drove the car that night. I lent it to her. When she came back that morning and I saw blood stains on the car, she told me she hit something. But when we went back there and saw nothing, she said it must have been a deer until she confessed it was people.”

“Then why did your family call saying you were trying to run away?”

“What?”

“You would be taken in for trial tomorrow.”

With his final word, I was taken back to the cell.

~

The trail was brutal and swift.

The prosecution painted me as a reckless, unrepentant, callous, and spoiled heiress who thought she was above the law and tried to run away without facing justice.

The defense was weak. They were deliberately doing it. They looked uninterested. They didn’t even call Luisa to the stand. Instead, the prosecution did.

I found it hard to breathe when Luisa walked into the courtroom. She wore black and looked like a pitiful woman who had been wronged. A facade she had displayed to the public for years. But when asked what happened that night, she didn’t hesitate to talk.

“I was asleep that night. I didn’t borrow Matilda’s car. I didn’t leave the house. But I remembered Matilda coming in late and she came to my room to wake me. She looked shaken and frightened. When I asked what happened, she threatened me not to tell anyone and said she already handled it. I wanted to inform the police but she said she was going to take everyone down with her if I did.” She sobbed at the end and was quickly escorted to meet my mother and Joel who consoled her.

“That’s a lie. She’s lying!” I screamed from the defendant’s seat.

But the jury wasn’t looking at me anymore. He ordered the dismissal of the court. I was dragged back to my cell before I could talk to my family.

By the end of the week, the verdict was set.

Guilty.

I was found guilty on all counts.

The judge didn’t flinch when he pronounced my sentence. Twenty years without parole.

Just like that, my last thread of hope snapped.

Two years later.

Suffocation and cruelty.

Hopelessness and pain.

These were the words I could use to describe the prison.

At first, I held onto hope. Maybe someone will realize the story didn’t add up. But weeks turned into months, yet nothing.

I was sick. I've known about it since a year ago.

It started with coughs, then fevers. My body weakened at a fast pace. I was heavily malnourished and frail from stress and depression. The prison clinic was underfunded and overcrowded. I waited for help that never came.

On my last night, I could barely lift my head. I knew I was going to die in hours. The doctor already informed me. I had pneumonia and was heavily poisoned.

Despite being in my last moments, I wanted revenge badly and it hurt that I had lost till the end.

A kind nurse left a notebook with me, asking me to write anything I wanted to.

“If only I would be given a chance by the heavens.”

Then I watched the pen fall off my hand and felt my soul leave my body.

I was dead but didn’t feel the peace that came with it.