Emma's POV
"Mrs. Hartwell, you have the right to remain silent."
I sat in the cold police interrogation room, staring at the detective across the metal table. My hands were cuffed—actually cuffed—like I was a criminal.
"I didn't kill Daniel Roth," I said for the tenth time. "I barely knew him."
"Yet you met him six times over the past month." Detective Harris slid photos across the table. "Coffee shop. Art gallery. Restaurant. Park. These are security camera footage, Mrs. Hartwell. Very real, unlike the photoshopped images your sister-in-law created."
My stomach twisted. "Those meetings were innocent. He asked me about art—"
"Did he also ask you about your husband's life insurance policy?"
My blood went cold. "What?"
"Daniel Roth's laptop contained detailed files on Adrian Hartwell's assets, including a twenty-million-dollar life insurance policy where you're listed as the sole beneficiary." Detective Harris leaned forward. "Interesting reading material for a casual art friend, don't you think?"
"I don't know anything about that—"
"Daniel also had emails discussing the best ways to make a death look like an accident. Brake failures. Gas leaks. Poisoning that mimics heart attacks." The detective's eyes were hard. "And he had a calendar reminder for next week that said 'Final payment from E.H.' Care to explain what you were planning to pay him for?"
The room was spinning. "This is insane. I never emailed him. I never paid him anything—"
"Then explain this." Another photo. A bank statement showing a transfer of fifty thousand dollars from an account in my name to Daniel's account. Dated one week ago.
"That's not my account! I've never seen that before!"
"It has your name. Your social security number. Your signature on the opening documents." Detective Harris sat back. "Mrs. Hartwell, I've seen a lot of murder-for-hire schemes. Wife wants out of marriage but doesn't want to lose the money. She hires someone to kill the husband, make it look like an accident, collect the insurance. But your hired killer got cold feet, didn't he? Maybe tried to blackmail you for more money. So you killed him before he could talk."
"NO!" I slammed my cuffed hands on the table. "I didn't hire anyone! I don't want Adrian dead! This is all Vivian—she's framing me!"
"Vivian Chen is in the next room confessing to the photo scheme. She admitted she and Daniel planned to break up your marriage. But she swears she knew nothing about any murder plot. And you know what? Her story checks out. Her bank accounts are clean. Her emails mention fraud, not murder." The detective leaned in close. "Yours don't."
Tears burned my eyes. "Someone's setting me up. Someone created that bank account, faked those emails—"
"Or maybe you're just not as good at covering your tracks as you thought."
The door opened. Another detective entered and whispered something to Harris.
Harris's face changed. "Well. This just got interesting." He looked at me. "Mrs. Hartwell, we just got the coroner's preliminary report. Daniel Roth was poisoned. Arsenic in his coffee. And guess whose fingerprints are all over the coffee cup?"
My world stopped. "No. No, that's impossible—"
"You met him at the coffee shop yesterday afternoon. Security footage shows you handing him a cup. He drank it. Three hours later, he was dead."
"I did hand him coffee! He dropped his and I—" I stopped, my mind racing. "Oh my God. Someone switched the cups. Someone knew I'd be there, knew I'd help him, and used it to frame me."
"Convenient theory with no proof." Harris stood up. "Emma Hartwell, you're under arrest for the murder of Daniel Roth and conspiracy to commit murder against Adrian Hartwell. You have the right to—"
"Wait!" I was sobbing now. "Please, just let me talk to Adrian. Let me explain—"
"Your husband is being interviewed as a potential target, not a visitor. You won't be seeing him." Harris opened the door. "Take her to booking."
As they led me away in handcuffs, I saw Adrian through a window in another interrogation room. He was talking to detectives, his face pale and drawn.
Our eyes met for just a second.
Then I was pulled away, down a hallway, toward a cell, toward a nightmare I couldn't wake up from.
Four hours later, I sat in a holding cell, still in shock. They'd taken my phone, my jewelry, everything. I was alone with just my thoughts and my terror.
The cell door opened. A guard stood there with a lawyer I didn't recognize—an older woman in an expensive suit.
"Mrs. Hartwell, I'm Rebecca Stone. Your husband hired me to represent you."
Adrian hired me a lawyer. Even now, even thinking I might have tried to kill him, he was helping me.
"I'm innocent," I told her. "I swear—"
"I believe you." Rebecca sat down beside me. "And I have good news and bad news. Good news: I got you bail. Five million dollars, which your husband posted immediately. You'll be out in an hour."
Relief flooded through me. "And the bad news?"
"The bad news is that while you've been in here, the police searched your apartment. They found arsenic in your bathroom cabinet. Hidden behind your tampons, of all places. They also found a burner phone with texts to Daniel discussing 'the plan' and 'making sure it can't be traced back to us.'"
I felt sick. "Someone planted that. Someone broke into my home—"
"I believe you. But Emma, whoever is framing you is very, very good. They've thought of everything. Every piece of evidence points directly at you." Rebecca pulled out her tablet. "There's more. The insurance policy on Adrian? It was updated six months ago—right around the time you first met Daniel. The update includes a double indemnity clause. If Adrian dies in an accident, you get forty million instead of twenty."
"I didn't know about any of that—"
"The signature on the update documents is yours. Notarized and everything." Rebecca looked at me seriously. "Emma, someone has been planning this for months. Setting you up piece by piece. And now Daniel's dead, you're the perfect suspect, and someone is about to try to kill your husband for real."
My hands started shaking. "Adrian. Where is he? Is he safe?"
"He's at the police station still, giving his statement. They have him under protection." Rebecca paused. "But Emma, he's refusing protection after tonight. Says he won't hide in his own city. Which means whoever orchestrated this—whoever killed Daniel—is going to make their move soon."
"We have to warn him—"
"He knows. And he's furious. Not at you—at whoever did this. He told the police in no uncertain terms that you're innocent and he'll prove it himself if he has to." Rebecca smiled slightly. "Your husband apparently made quite a scene. Threatened to sue the entire police department if they didn't investigate properly."
Something warm flickered in my chest despite the horror. Adrian believed me. Finally, truly believed me.
"There's something else." Rebecca's smile faded. "Daniel didn't die from the poisoned coffee you supposedly gave him."
"What?"
"The autopsy shows he ingested arsenic hours before your meeting. The coffee cup with your fingerprints? It was staged. Someone poisoned him earlier, then made sure evidence pointed to you." Rebecca leaned forward. "Emma, Daniel was killed by someone who had access to him before you met him that day. Someone who knew his schedule. Someone who knew exactly how to frame you."
My mind raced. "Vivian. She knew his schedule. She was working with him—"
"Vivian's been ruled out. She was on a video call with her ex-husband in Paris at the time of Daniel's actual poisoning. Confirmed by phone records and witnesses." Rebecca pulled up a photo on her tablet. "But this is interesting. Security footage from Daniel's apartment building yesterday morning. Look who was visiting him four hours before he died."
She showed me the image, and my heart stopped.
It wasn't Vivian in the footage.
It was Adrian's mother, Diane Hartwell.
"Your mother-in-law visited Daniel the morning he was poisoned," Rebecca said quietly. "She stayed for twenty minutes. And when she left, she was carrying something—looks like a coffee thermos—that she didn't have when she arrived."
"No," I whispered. "Diane wouldn't... she couldn't..."
"There's more. I did some digging into your mother-in-law's finances. Three months ago, she took out a five-million-dollar loan. Last month, she made a payment to a private investigator—the same one who conveniently 'found' all this evidence against you." Rebecca's face was grim. "Emma, I think Diane Hartwell has been orchestrating this entire thing. The question is: why?"
My phone—returned with my personal items—buzzed with a text from an unknown number:
"You figured it out faster than I expected. Congratulations. But you're too late. Adrian's coffee this morning had a special ingredient. He has about 6 hours before the symptoms start. If you want the antidote, come to the Hartwell estate. Alone. Tell anyone and he dies. —D"
I showed Rebecca the text with shaking hands.
"It's a trap," she said immediately.
"I don't care." I stood up. "That's Adrian's life. I have to go."
"Emma, if you go there alone, you'll be walking into a murder scene. Yours."
"Then I guess I'm about to find out why my mother-in-law wants me dead."
I walked toward the exit, toward whatever nightmare awaited me at the Hartwell estate.
Because the woman I'd called family for five years had just poisoned my husband.
And I was the only one who could save him.