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."