"Which is why," Selene said cheerfully, "you'll be filing for bankruptcy. Your house, your cars, your jewelry, your savings accounts, even your grandmother's ring – everything will be sold to pay your debts."
"But even if you sell everything," Marcus added, "you'll still owe about forty million dollars. That means you'll be working to pay off this debt for the rest of your life."
Amelia's legs gave out. She sat down hard on the grass.
"Why are you doing this to me?"
Selene knelt down next to her. "Because fifteen years ago, you took something that didn't belong to you. Something that changed my entire life."
"I was nine years old! What could I possibly have taken that matters now?"
"You took my identity," Selene said quietly. "My real name is Amy Williams. Amy, just like you. But when I was six years old, my parents died in a car crash. I was put in foster care, bounced from home to home."
Amelia stared at her. "I don't understand."
"One day, I was placed with a family here in this town. The Grants. Your parents."
Amelia's mother gasped. "That's impossible."
"Is it?" Selene stood up. "Check your files, Mrs. Grant. Check the foster care paperwork from fifteen years ago. You'll find records for Amy Williams, age nine, placed in your home for three months."
Amelia's father went pale. "Grace, tell me this isn't true."
Her mother was crying now. "We... we were having financial problems. We thought about fostering to help with expenses. But when Amy came to us..."
"You already had a daughter named Amy," Selene finished. "Two Amy's in one house was confusing. So you started calling me by my middle name. Selene."
"But that was just temporary," Amelia's mother sobbed. "You were only with us for three months before your aunt was found."
"Three months where I experienced what it felt like to have a real family. Three months where I thought maybe, finally, I had found a home."
Selene's voice was getting harder now.
"But then my aunt showed up, and you sent me away. Back to foster care, back to being nobody. Meanwhile, your precious Amy got to keep the life I wanted."
Marcus opened another folder. "While you were living with the Grants, you kept a diary. You wrote down everything – family conversations, financial problems, personal secrets. Things a nine-year-old shouldn't have understood but somehow did."
"When I left," Selene continued, "I took that diary with me. It had information about your father's business troubles, your mother's health problems, even some things about the music industry your parents were discussing."
"That's the notebook they want," Amelia whispered.
"That's MY notebook," Selene corrected. "And over the years, I've used the information in it to build my career. To become successful enough to destroy yours."
Amelia looked at her parents. "Is this true? Did you have a foster daughter named Amy?"
Her mother was crying too hard to speak.
Her father nodded slowly. "We were going to tell you when you were older. But you were so young when Selene left, we thought you'd forgotten her."
"I did forget her. I barely remember..."
"But I remembered you," Selene said. "I remembered everything. The bedroom we shared. The songs your mother sang at bedtime. The way your father made pancakes on Sunday mornings. The family I lost because you already existed."
Marcus pulled out his phone. "And now, Amy Grant, it's time for the final phase. Tomorrow morning, every major news network will receive a video of you confessing to creating fake evidence against Selene. The video will show you admitting to bullying, to lying, and to trying to destroy an innocent girl's career."
"But I would never say those things!"
"You will if you want your parents to stay safe," Selene said softly. "We have them on camera at several compromising locations over the past few days. Locations that would be very hard to explain if the police came asking questions."
Amelia felt her heart stop. "What kind of locations?"
"Let's just say your parents have been very helpful in setting up this final scene. They just didn't know they were being filmed."
Marcus showed Amelia his phone screen. It was a video of her parents entering a building she didn't recognize.
"That's the Riverside Charity Foundation," Marcus explained. "The same charity that's missing fifty thousand dollars. The same charity where your parents' fingerprints are now all over the safe."
Amelia's mother looked confused. "We've never been to any charity foundation."
"Haven't you?" Selene smiled. "Think carefully about everywhere you've been in the past three days. Every building you entered while looking for Amy. Every office that offered to help."
The horrible truth hit Amelia like lightning.
"You've been following us. Setting traps everywhere we went."
"Now you're starting to understand," Selene said. "Tomorrow, you can either confess to everything and take full blame, or your parents will be arrested for stealing charity money intended for homeless children."
Amelia looked at her parents, then at Marcus and Selene.
Fifteen years of planning. Fifteen years of waiting for revenge.
And now she had less than twenty-four hours to choose between destroying herself or watching her parents go to prison for crimes they didn't commit.
But as Selene turned to walk away, she said something that made Amelia's blood freeze:
"Oh, and Amy? That car accident that killed my parents fifteen years ago? It wasn't an accident. Someone wanted me out of the picture because I knew too much about certain people in the music industry. People who are now my business partners."
Selene smiled one last time. "Sweet dreams, Amy. Tomorrow, one way or another, this all ends."