“I need proof,” I said, my voice barely a breath. “A testimony from an inmate
won’t overturn my conviction. I need her file.”

Mara swallowed hard. “My sister still works in the clinic’s archives. It’s
risky.”

“Tell your sister I will pay off her medical school debt the day I get out,” I
promised, my eyes locking onto hers with terrifying intensity. “Every last
cent.”

It took three months. The medical records were smuggled in on a micro-SD card
taped to the underside of a postage stamp on a letter addressed to me.

But the medical file wasn’t enough. It proved Vivian lied about the baby, but it
didn’t prove she threw herself against the table. I needed the moment of impact.

This required tapping into the prison’s underground economy. Through a network
of women who had nothing left to lose but carried deep connections to the
outside world, I located a disgruntled former security guard from the boutique
hotel. Marcus had fired him to keep him quiet, but people like Marcus always
underestimate the resentment of the working class.

For the price of a burner phone and a promise of future employment, the guard
sent a compressed video file to Celeste, who then smuggled it to me during a
legal visitation.

I remember sitting on my thin mattress in the dead of night, the prison eerily
silent except for the distant cough of an inmate. I held Celeste’s smuggled