Mark sat at the defense table. He was no longer the arrogant, charming husband in expensive suits paid for by my credit cards. He wore a drab, faded orange federal prison jumpsuit.

He looked aged, hollowed out, and utterly broken.

He wept hysterically—a pathetic, wretched sound—as the federal judge sternly denied his plea for leniency, citing the sociopathic, predatory nature of stealing from a pregnant woman in the middle of a medical emergency.

Mark was sentenced to seven years in a federal penitentiary for wire fraud and reckless endangerment.

His sister, Chloe—the woman he’d sacrificed his family to save—was entirely unreachable. The moment she realized the FBI was investigating the source of the funds used to pay off her gambling syndicate, she fled the state to escape her remaining creditors and potential accessory charges.

She abandoned Mark completely, leaving him to rot in prison alone, proving that their toxic sibling bond had always been entirely one-sided.