Chapter Seven

The documents Stan gave her was a very big help. She was able to straighten out most of the issue but some papers were still missing. She had her hopes up until she received a letter from a bank which wasn't even their company bank reminding them of the deadline of their loan. She didn't know what the more annoying fact was, that in the entire company nobody knew about the loan or the loan was collected in the company's name. The company was used as collateral which said a lot on the whereabouts of the other missing document. How could this get worse? The point was that whoever was doing this was really a sick sadist.

Her phone was ringing, she checked the caller ID, it was Detective Bill. "Good day Detective. It better be good news, my day is already sour as it seems" she said even before he acknowledge her greetings. There was a pause then a sigh before he finally spoke.

"In my years of work this is my first time of hearing a news that is both bad and good at the same time"

"Most people usually want the bad news first but lately I've had lots of bad news and would prefer the good news first hopefully it would minimize the intensity of the bad"

"Very well then, we've arrested the culprit responsible for all your demise"

Oh my God! Did she hear right, this is terrific news! Finally they've gotten enough evidence to pin her down. Yes! Oh she was free. Bye jail. What could be the bad news that could spoil things? She hoped it wasn't a dead body because someone needed to pay for all her pains.

"This is great news! I just hope you didn't arrest a dead body?"

"No, alive and well" the Detective replied

"And the bad news?"

"You need to hear for yourself, come down to the station" the Detective said. Silvia agreed and he hung up.

She mused to herself as far as the culprit was caught alive and healthy there was no bad news that could spoil this not even the unknown loan because everything will be resolved. She abandoned everything and had to comport herself with sheer will not to race to her car jumping and giggling like a child. The excitement was overwhelming, she couldn't remember the last time she felt this way. She felt like a hyper active who had an overdose of sugar. The drive to the police station seemed endless and she could swear hers was the only car on the road. She wasn't even aware of anything rather than getting to her destination.

Finally she was there. She couldn't wait. She dashed into the station like a roller coaster on full speed almost knocking down people and apologizing without even looking. God if she didn't have a reason, she would think she was coming down with something very serious. She met Detective Bill in the hall way. He appeared to be tired and looked nothing like the proud Detective that just cracked a case.

"You are here?" it seemed to her he tried consciously to leave out the early from the question.

"If I had wings I would have gotten here faster, so where is the architect of my misery?" she could barely keep the anxiety from her voice.

"She would be brought into the interrogation room, please follow me" he said and turned to lead the way. She paused before following him.

"You know for someone that just solve what could be the greatest riddle of this century, you look kind of sad" Silvia said behind his back. He didn't reply neither did he turn but kept walking. He led her to one of the interrogation room. As he opened the door she held her breathe. He opened the door and stepped in and she was right behind him. At last she was face to face with the wicked soul that had been tormenting her life. The only person she would willing murder presently. The person who had caused her to suffer. Standing face to face should give her a rush of violent emotions. She was feeling a rush of emotion which was quite all right because that's how you feel when after all the waiting you find out that the room is empty!

She felt like someone had knocked out the ground from under her feet. No wonder the Detective looked so sad and pale. She began to put things together. She could remember the Detective telling her in the hospital the day her father was admitted that the judge in charge gave the less than two weeks to round up everything concerning the case and come up with conclusive evidence. To the best of her knowledge they had nothing solid. There was no culprit just her. Her spirit died, so she was rushing so eagerly to go back to jail. She could never have guessed Detective Bill could betray her like this. He could have atleast told her rather than raise her hopes like this. What would have happened if he told her is not as if she could run away.

"How could you, why didn't you tell me there was no culprit just me?" she said the tears in her eyes stung. She was trying so hard not to let them pour. Her voice wavered and she felt cold suddenly.

"There is and it isn't you. They are bringing her in any minute" the Detective replied.

"They are?" Silvia said moving towards the Detective who was standing beside a table which had two seats opposite each other. She dried her eyes as she heard the door open and turned. She saw Ellie being led in and she could make out the heads of two policemen behind her.

"Here they are" the Detective said. Silvia turned her back to them resting her back on the edge of the table.

"I knew it!" she began without turning. "I knew your mysterious appearance had something to do with my predicament. Whenever something went wrong you were always there. You appeared after I was accused of murder, got engaged to my fiancé after I was sent to jail, took over my position in the company after you heard I escaped jail, ruined the company when I came back for it and decide to kill my dad when you thought I was gaining on you. You are really an expert in this game. You must be really proud of yourself, I mean it took the police this long to have solid evidence on you. I must say you are really smart but you know the funniest thing, tables turn when you least expect the..." she was going to tell Ellie that she would make sure there was no going out of this and she was going to suffer more than she did and watch her pay for all her crimes. Silvia wanted to see the look on her face when she told her this so she turned to face them.

"Mom!!" Silvia tables turned for real. Nothing in this world had prepared her for this. She turned back hoping to look into Ellie's blank and probably stony face but rather seated opposite her was her own mother. So those policemen were not escorting Ellie in but her mother. What kind of twisted crap was this? She suddenly noticed that there were much more people than she detected earlier. Head count. There was the Detective, the two policemen, Ellie, her mom, Sandra, Stan and two other people she didn't recognize.

"What the hell is going on here? Why is my mother sitting in that chair and not her? What sort of twisted joke is this? I mean Ellie's the criminal not my mother." Silvia voiced in a rush. Whatever the joke was she wasn't finding it funny.

"Ellie's not the criminal, she is!" it was Sandra that spoke up. Silvia couldn't believe this! Sandra and everybody in the room were taking Ellie's side. God this could not be happening to her first her father and now her mother. Couldn't they see she was framing her mom and nobody was doing anything about it? She was about to say something else when another thought struck her. No wonder they didn't tell her, they knew she wouldn't stand by and watch them frame her mother. She was about to react. 

"So blind and gullible, I knew I could throw you into the furnace and you'll still run back to save me" her mom Mrs. Chamel said. These words were like poison to her ears. She couldn't believe they came out from dear mother's mouth.

"Mom?" Silvia called to her out of the necessity to clear her senses because they were becoming blurred.

"Don't call me that! I am not your mother!" another bomb shell

"What?" this was getting out of hand. What was really going on?

"My child can never be stupid and you are one stupid, useless and hopeless child. Your mother would be disappointed wherever she is now" Mrs. Chamel said. The first was like poison, these were bullet, and she shivered with each word until she sat dazed on the opposite seat starring at the stranger in front of her. No, this can't be possible. It had to be a setup, Ellie was blackmailing her or she was mentally deranged or even hypnotized. She licked her lips and shook her head. All these needed to go away.

"Foolish girl, still think this is a party trick. Wake up dummy!" the woman continued to abuse her as if she derived pleasure in humiliating her and was so delighted to watch.

Silvia turned to the rest. "What is going on here?" she was confused and needed answers.

The Detective placed a two sheets of paper on the table in front of her. Silvia took a look at the paper as the Detective explained.

"These are the DNA test result. The first is yours. It shows that Mr. Ben Chamel is your biological father where as Mrs. Alice Chamel is not your biological mother" the Detective said. Silvia looked up. Normally if told that fact she would have contested it but she had the test result in front of her. He continued.

"The other shows a match between Ellie and Mrs. Chamel and none with Mr. Chamel" he said

So Ellie was her step sister in a kind of way. Her father married Ellie's mom who she thought all these while was her mom. Gosh how many lies have they told her? No wonder Ellie hated her and here she was hating her father for ruining everyone's life with his extra marital affairs. 

"Why didn't you tell me before? I even order for a test and got no result." Silvia complained.

"We ordered the hospital not to grant you or any other unauthorized person access to this information. We figured once you found out you would confront her and things might get really bad"  the detective said.

So they knew her mother, sorry Ellie's mother was behind this all along and kept quiet. They let her call this back stabbing woman mother for few more months. She turned to the woman seated in front of her. All she could see was pure and undisguised hatred. What had she done wrong to be so hated? "Why did you do this?" she asked and Alice smiled as if she anticipated the question.

"There are so many reasons but the major ones are obvious. First, you are not my daughter and secondly I wanted you to suffer helplessly and you did" Alice replied without remorse.

"She gave us information about your biological mother" Stan spoke for the first time

"And?" Silvia inquired curiously she wanted to know the whereabouts of her biological mother.

"When we pulled out her information, we discovered that she died during child birth due to complication after she gave birth to you. We are checking if the hospital still has some DNA sample for which we can use to run a test" the Detective replied.

"Complication?" Alice said and scoffed. "Please spare me the nonsense. I killed her okay? Complication had nothing to do with it, just some stuff the hospital made when they could not explain what happened"

"She has refused to give us any other information until you got here" the Detective said

"And since you are here, I might as well tell you. Get your face towel sugar cause you'll need it or better still a shoulder to cry on. I would have said Stan but now he is engaged to my daughter. It's a pity that you never knew about her and when you did she took everything from you. Just like your mother did to me. You see your mother and I were friends very good friends, best friends but you see friends are highly overrated. Your mother always got the good stuff and I was always in the background. I got tired of it and decided to ruin her life. Your mother was our high school queen, everybody in college loved her and everybody she came across worshipped her. She had a good heart no doubt, beautiful, talented but also very stupid like you. She always believed that everyone has good in them. She knew I was deadly and tried to change me, she thought I wouldn't hurt her but that was her own mistake not mine. She should have realized that in achieving my goals every other person was just a stepping stone but she chose to believe the best in me..."

"My mother was your best friend and yet you killed her" Silvia said. It seemed the motherly love she had for Alice was beginning to wane.

"I said you are stupid. I just told you that people are like stones you use them to climb up and throw them into the sea when they have served their purpose. She was going to get married to the man I wanted and I couldn't let that happen not that I loved him but I just didn't want her to be happy. I was always there to ruin her happy moments and as long as she married him she would be happy no matter what so I couldn't let that happen" Alice said

Alice further told them how Silvia's mom and dad were dating and got engaged. The man was rich and loved Silvia's mom so much that he cared for her every need. Alice never wanted her to be happy so she decided to set her up. The man was really hurt and got drunk and so she decided to use the opportunity. She had also noticed that Silvia's mom was showing early signs of pregnancy. Alice decided to get pregnant and when she didn't get pregnant for Silvia's dad she found someone else to do the job and accused her dad of being responsible. When Silvia's mom found out she was pregnant she wanted to tell Ben but Alice convinced her not to because he wouldn't believe her, she should wait until the child is born. Alice told her she was also pregnant and was moving west to be with the father of the child. She never told Silvia's mom that she had deceived Ben into marrying her so as not to have an illegitimate child and that she was going west to marry Ben. Silvia's mom took her advice foolishly because she thought she had a friend who was looking out for her. Alice knew that one day Ben might request a DNA test and so kept a close watch on Silvia's mom. When it was time for Silvia to come out, Alice travelled back to the city were Silvia's mom was and took a drug that induced premature labour. It was so planned that they both gave birth the same day. She had paid some people and got them into the hospital, they were the ones who exchanged the babies and increased the flow of her drip. Her heart couldn't keep up with the speed and before anyone could notice she was bloated. The hospital would have saved her if they had not injected something into it. Of course the hospital couldn't admit that a patient was poisoned under their very nose so they passed it off as complication. Alice went as far as to tell them that she wanted the slate clean so she set up the people who were involved and they died one way or the other.

The whole room was quiet. Everybody just starred at her as if she came up from hell right before their eyes. She was one wicked monster. She stabbed her best friend by ruining her life, stealing her child and eventually killed her. Of all the people involved Ellie had the least surprise but most didn't know why.

"You ruined my mom's life, stole me from her and killed her what kind of beast are you!?"

"A very wise one. I saw an opportunity and I took it"

"You abandoned your own child because of your greed? You are really insane!" Sandra said

"Thank you. After all what use is a child that can't get you what you want but I kept track of her anyway. I made sure she was never adopted but remained in the orphanage until when I needed her which was recently"

"You ruined her chances of a normal life because of your selfishness. That's real motherly." Sandra said again

"So you did all these because you hated my mother. Wow, you are really twisted upstairs" Silvia said still not believing the relationship between the woman she called mother for years and the woman in front of her. 

"Yeah I thought so, that was until Ben named you Silvia. Of all the names he could pick he chose that witch. He couldn't call you Alice, I mean you were my daughter and it didn't take me long to realize that he still loved her even when he knew she was dead. The fact that you were actually her daughter made me hate you more. So just like your mother, I never wanted you to be happy. I waited a long time to actualized this and I did" Alice said beaming. The Detective put her down for mental checkup in his mind, she was a real psychopath. 

"Why didn't you just kill me? Could have been easier" Silvia said

"I tried that before but you were always lucky. It dawned on me, a part of her was struggling to live on so I figured, watching you suffer will be better and it was. I may have made a mistake poisoning your own glass at the party. If you had died I wouldn't have had much fun like I did and I wouldn't be here" Alice said and saw the way Silvia was looking at her. 

"Yes I was behind the poisoning. I poisoned the wine so that everybody that drank would die. Unfortunately his two assistants were too slow. It should have been a full swoop, so I had to figure out a way to get rid of them because they actually helped me with the false document. It's amazing what technology could do. All I had to do was buy a new number and use the voice changing app and I was able to lure you there"

Silvia could remember things now that day of the poison, Alice was the one that handed her purse. She must have snuck the poison into it and the day of the murder she had given Alice her car's spare key when she wanted to cruise in it and forgot to get it back. Now all these were making sense.

"One thing I don't get. You got Ellie to help you, why was she not arrested?" Silvia asked

"As weird as it sounds we couldn't find anything on her" the Detective replied

"And how is that possible?" Silvia said she had intended the question for Ellie but she was nowhere to be found.