Chapter 10 - Jessica’s Desperate Retaliation and the Attempted Theft
While the legal storm closed in around her, Jessica Vance was spiraling into madness.
Cut off from all credit cards and facing immediate eviction from her luxury penthouse on the Upper East Side, Jessica made one last desperate, reckless gamble.
At three o'clock in the morning, wearing a dark hoodie and oversized sunglasses, Jessica used an old duplicate key she had stolen months ago to break into my private apartment in Brooklyn. Her goal was simple and insane: locate my external hard drives, steal the backup copies of the forensic files, and find any cash or jewelry she could use to flee the country to a non-extradition territory.
She tore through my living room, ripping open drawers, smashing framed photographs, and frantically searching my bedroom closet.
"Where is it?! Where did she put it?!" Jessica muttered to herself, her eyes bloodshot, her hands shaking violently.
Suddenly, the overhead lights flooded the room with brilliant, blinding light.
Jessica shrieked, shielding her eyes.
Standing in the doorway of the bedroom were two uniformed NYPD officers, accompanied by Detective Thomas Ross and myself. Mounted discreetly on the bookshelf in front of her was a high-definition 4K security camera, with a small green light blinking steadily—broadcasting every second of her break-in directly to the precinct's cloud server.
"Jessica Vance," Ross said calmly, stepping forward with a pair of steel handcuffs. "You're under arrest for felony burglary, breaking and entering, and violation of an active protective order."
Jessica dropped the jewelry box she was holding, the cheap pearls scattering across the hardwood floor. She looked at me with pure, unadulterated hatred.
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"You ruined my life, Kristen!" Jessica screamed, struggling violently as the two officers grabbed her arms and forced them behind her back. "You were supposed to die in that fire! You were always the weak one! You took everything from me!"
"I didn't take anything from you, Jessica," I said, looking her dead in the eye as the steel cuffs clicked around her wrists. "You destroyed yourself the moment you lit that match twelve years ago. I'm just the one who survived it."
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