"Monica threatened me with those brand new prosthetics!" Eric cried. "She said if I didn't agree to be with her, she would kill herself right in front of me!"

Tears streamed down his still handsome face, his expression pitiful enough to break hearts.

"I'm the real victim here! I just wanted her to calm down, but she tried to frame me with her death!

"Now, she's dead, and everyone's attacking me! Bradley, how can you hurt me over a woman who couldn't take rejection and wanted to destroy me?

"Sandra! Tell him the truth! Please save me!"

The mood in the live chat flipped almost instantly.

[I'm actually crying. He's way too tragic. Gets obsessed over by a mentally unstable girl, then hunted down by her psycho brother.]

[She brought it on herself! She couldn't get the guy, so she burned everything down and dragged everyone with her. That's just gross.]

[The brother's unhinged, too. Didn't he know what his sister was really like? The cops should lock him up before he hurts someone else.]

[I feel bad for the guy. He's handsome, decent, and he even stayed silent to protect a dead girl's reputation. And this is what he gets.]

[So that's what really happened. Love turning into hate. Her brother's basically a ticking time bomb.]

He said my sister, Monica Porter, fell?

Did he think I was an idiot?

Those prosthetic legs cost every dollar I saved over ten years. They were custom-built.

The frame was aerospace-grade carbon fiber. The joints were reinforced titanium alloy. Even if a car ran them over, it would leave nothing more than a few scratches.

There was no way they could shatter into cold, broken pieces from a simple fall.

I stared at the rolling wall of venomous comments. I stared at Eric's face as he twisted the truth without blinking. Every word I wanted to say clogged in my throat.

What was the point of reasoning with an animal?

Seeing my silence, Eric thought he had won. A trace of smugness crept into his voice.

He pressed on while the iron was hot.

"Bradley, look, everyone knows what's right and wrong. I get that you loved Monica, but you can't let her fool you forever. And honestly… She told me in private that she hated her legs. She said they were a burden. She even said if she could get rid of them in some dramatic way, and make me remember her forever, it would be worth it…"

I let out a short laugh. I couldn't hold it in anymore.

My tone shifted, and I cut straight to the point.

"Sandra, why does the bullying video you submitted to the court end right when Monica falls?

"What about the part where Eric and his friends surround her, filming on their phones, laughing while they force her to crawl on the floor like a dog to pick up the broken pieces of her legs?

"You cut that part out, didn't you?"

Eric kept fighting back. "Monica was already mentally unstable! What you're doing now is exactly what she wanted. You're helping her complete her twisted final wish!"

I didn't give him another second to speak.

The claw hammer in my hand traced a cold arc through the air and came down hard on Eric's other intact ankle.

Crack!

The sickening sound of bone snapping rang out, layered with his piercing scream.

I looked straight into the camera, my voice flat and icy.

"That's the second one. You've got two hours. If you can't produce the full video, I'll use this hammer to smash every bone in his body, inch by inch. And then I'll pull out every tendon, one by one."

-

Shrill police sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer by the second. Below the building, flashing lights sealed off the entire block.

Special response units in black tactical gear moved into position. On distant rooftops, snipers took aim.

I looked at the scene unfolding beneath me and let out a dismissive smile.

They had no idea that this place, the newest academic building at Anteopold University, was my project from start to finish. I was involved in the site selection, the structural design, and the final review of every construction drawing. Every blueprint, every detail, passed through my hands.

I knew exactly where the load-bearing walls were weakest, where the cameras had blind spots, and which ventilation shafts avoided every infrared sensor.

If it weren't for Sandra Pauley, I would've been standing at the very top of this field, not a man who gave up his career to orbit his family as a stay-at-home husband.

My phone rang, sharp and sudden.

Sandra.

I answered and put it on speaker.

Her voice exploded through the phone, hysterical and shrill.

"Bradley, have you lost your mind? Stop this right now! This is a crime! Do you even know what you're doing?"

I laughed softly.

"Judge Pauley, your response time today is a lot faster than when you were supposed to get justice for Monica. Where's the video? Where's the full recording I asked for? Did you bring it?"

What answered was silence.

Then, a ripple of movement broke out in the crowd below. Sandra stepped out of a patrol car and snatched the megaphone from the officer in charge.

Her voice shook, thick with tears. "Bradley, calm down. Please, calm down! I know you're hurting. I'm hurting, too. Monica was like my own sister."

She stood at the edge of the police perimeter and opened her arms toward me.

"Come down, okay? As long as you let Eric go, I'll do anything. I'll quit being a judge. We'll leave this place and go somewhere no one knows us. I'll stay with you for the rest of my life. We'll start over, alright?"

The live chat melted all over again, moved by her so-called devotion, flooding with praise for her and pleas for me to stop.

[Gosh, his wife is incredible. She's giving up her career for him!]

[Yeah, come down already. Don't hurt innocent people. Don't throw away such a good woman.]

[This is real love. Someone wake this crazy man up!]

I laughed until tears spilled out.

"Hahaha. Start over? Sandra, did you forget something? The night Monica jumped off this building, why was your phone set to Do Not Disturb?

"Oh, right. I remember now.

"Because you were too busy partying with Eric at the most upscale club in town, celebrating his 20th birthday!"

I faced the camera and spoke evenly.

"From the moment she was locked in that art room to the moment she jumped, three full hours passed.

"Monica called you 27 times. Twenty-seven! And you didn't answer a single one!

"You wiped your call log clean, sure. But the carrier's backend records should still be there, shouldn't they, Judge Pauley?"

I lifted the blood-soaked claw hammer and aimed it at Eric's already shattered leg.

The intent in my eyes was no longer hidden.

"Stop acting. I only want the video."

I stared coldly at the woman below, who was frozen in place by my words.

"Sandra, you're afraid I'll keep hurting him, that he won't take the pain and end up confessing everything. Like how the two of you lay in a hotel bed, talking about how to cut the video, how to destroy the evidence."

My voice wasn't loud, but through the speaker, every word carried clearly to everyone listening.

Sandra's face drained of color.

"Oh," I added, sharp and deliberate, "and you're still wearing his favorite wood-scented cologne. Don't think I can't smell it."

"Monica was barely laid to rest yet, and you showed up dressed like that to see her. You stood in front of her grave and said, 'For everyone's reputation, let's just pretend nothing ever happened.' Sandra, you make me sick."

For a split second, the live chat froze.

Then it completely exploded.

[What the hell? She cheated with the guy?]

[This is too much. My brain just overheated. A wife who's a judge with a school bully boy toy? This is insane!]

[Wait. The more I listen, the more it sounds like Bradley is telling the truth. That woman's been acting the whole time.]

[If this is real, it's beyond disgusting. Monica isn't even gone yet, and the wife and the killer… I can't even think about it.]

Sandra's face flushed bright red.

"Bradley, stop slandering me! You're crazy! You've been blinded by hatred!"

I didn't bother responding. I pulled out my phone and projected a heart rate monitor app onto the corner of the livestream.

The line representing Eric's pulse was dropping, slow and steady, heading straight into danger.

"Look. Your buddy's heart rate is about to hit a critical level. Give it another 30 minutes. Even a miracle won't save him then."

I picked up the claw hammer and casually measured it above Eric's head.

Then, I issued my final ultimatum.

"I'll say this one last time. Release every angle, every unedited second of the full footage. Otherwise, this hammer comes down on his skull next."

After that, I cut the call with the police.

Standing was getting tiring.

I dragged a broken chair someone had abandoned on the rooftop, sat down, and closed my eyes.

My thoughts drifted back to the past, without me even realizing it.

After what happened to Monica, I nearly lost my mind.

I never believed she killed herself.

I used every connection I had. I even paid a small fortune to a top-tier hacker friend.

That was how I dug the deleted original surveillance footage out of hard drives the school had wiped again and again.

The video showed Eric leading a group of people as they cornered Monica in an empty art room.

It showed them laughing as they stomped on the prosthetic legs that carried all her hope, crushing them piece by piece.

It showed them pouring paint across the floor and forcing my proud little sister to lie flat and lick it clean, just to recover a worthless fragment of her leg.

Back then, I was stupid enough to hand the flash drive containing the full footage to the person I trusted most: my wife, the presiding judge of the family court.

I believed she would give Monica justice.

But the night before the hearing, Eric cried and dropped to his knees in front of Sandra, begging her to save him.

The next day, Sandra came to me, looking exhausted.

She told me the flash drive had suffered an "accidental" physical failure. The data was completely unrecoverable.

She tried to persuade me.

"Bradley, he's still just a kid. Don't ruin his whole life. And about Monica… You should let it go. Let her soul rest in peace."

Let her soul rest in peace…

I snapped my eyes open. The regret had kept me from sleeping more than a few hours in the past month.

Just then, Sandra's voice rose again from below.

Through the megaphone, it came trembling, cracked, completely broken.

"Fine. I'll give it to you. I'll give you everything! Bradley, you win. Just don't hurt him. I'm coming up now. I'll bring you the backup video."