MY DAUGHTER TUGGED ON MY WEDDING DRESS AND SAID, "I SAW NEW DADDY AND UNCLE PETER DO SOMETHING BAD" — WHAT I DID NEXT SHOCKED ALL 200 GUESTS

Two weeks later, I received a formal notice from the county correctional facility: Peter had submitted five consecutive requests for a contact visit, claiming he had critical information regarding Evan’s defense strategy that only I could hear.

I didn't want to go. I wanted to erase Peter from my memory entirely. But Detective Ross advised me that listening to Peter might uncover the remaining hidden offshore bank accounts where Evan had stashed five million dollars in stolen corporate funds.

I sat behind the thick reinforced glass in the maximum-security visitation room.

When the heavy steel door clicked open, Peter was led in by two corrections officers. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, his hands cuffed to a belly chain. In just fourteen days, he had aged ten years. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollow and sunken, and the arrogant, cocky swagger he had carried at the wedding was completely obliterated.

He picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with trembling hands.

I picked up mine, keeping my face as blank as stone.

"Elena," Peter choked out, pressing his forehead against the glass. "Thank God you came. Please... you have to talk to the prosecutor. They're charging me with accessory to capital murder. They're talking about thirty years to life. I didn't know Evan was going to kill David! I swear on our mother’s grave, I thought it was just supposed to be a scare tactic to get him to sell!"

"You knew, Peter," I said, my voice cutting through the receiver with icy clarity. "You knew the night David died. You showed up at the hospital with coffee and pretended to cry, while Evan was wiring three hundred thousand dollars to Hector Ramos from an account you co-signed."

"I was trapped!" Peter sobbed, tears streaming down his grimy cheeks. "I owed bookies in Atlantic City two million dollars. Evan bought my debt. He told me if I didn't help him get David’s company, they would put a bullet in my head and throw me in the river. I had no choice!"

"You always had a choice," I replied. "You could have come to your brother-in-law. David would have paid your debts in a heartbeat to protect our family. But you didn't want help, Peter. You wanted his life. You wanted his money, his status, and his company."

Peter clutched the receiver so tightly his knuckles turned white. "What about Mom? What about Thanksgiving? Are you really going to let your own brother rot in a cage for the rest of his life?"

"My brother died three years ago when he helped a hitman run David off Route 9," I said, staring directly into his desperate eyes. "The man sitting across from me is just a stranger who tried to poison my daughter’s mother for a trust fund."

"Elena, wait! I have the account numbers! Evan hid five million in an account in Zurich under his mother's maiden name! I'll give you the routing codes if you tell the judge I cooperated!"

"We already found the Zurich accounts three days ago, Peter," I said calmly. "The Swiss authorities froze them yesterday morning."

Peter’s jaw dropped. The last shred of hope drained from his face, leaving him completely, utterly bankrupt in every sense of the word.