Page 70 of Broken Empire
A murder charge would usually carry a minimum sentence of fifteen years—if not a life sentence—but I was able to get my time massively reduced in a deal made with the prosecutors, which took into account my part in exposing the Schöneberg Group.
So many arrests were made after the exposé on The Current that most of the cases were still dragging on in the court system, with hundreds of ex-Schöneberg members and clients still sitting in jail awaiting their trials after all these years. Of those who had already gone to trial, like me, sentence length was determined by the individual’s willingness to testify against other members and provide information that could aid the investigators in their search for victims.
Mirror Lake—along with many other Schöneberg dumping sites nationwide—had been dredged for bodies a year after the case went public. So far, seventy-three bodies from the lake had been identified and returned to family members for proper burial, including two of the students who went missing from Bellingham in the early 2000s.
There were hundreds more in the lake that hadn’t been recovered or identified yet, including my mother. I wasn’t sure if we’d ever find her remains, given how long she’d been dead. I was grateful that I knew what happened to her, though, as gut-wrenchingly awful as it was. It was better than spending my life hating her for supposedly abandoning me. She deserved better than that.
“How’s your dad?” Shay asked, pulling back from our embrace.
“He’s surviving,” I said with a tight smile. “My brothers are doing okay too.”
“Good. Any news on their sentencing?”
“They’ll all get at least ten years, but that’s a lot less than whatever they were facing if they didn’t cooperate,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “I’m just glad they’re still speaking to me. I really thought they’d hate me after what I did.”
“I know.” Shay rubbed the side of my arm. “But they know better. You just did what they were too weak and afraid to do themselves. You’ll always be their family no matter what.”
I nodded and pulled her into another hug, closing my eyes as I inhaled the vanilla scent of her silky hair. She was right. I’d carried a lot of guilt over the years for turning my family in along with the rest of the Schöneberg Group, but it wasn’t necessary. None of them blamed me, especially after the news about my mother came out. They all blamed themselves instead, and they probably always would.
My father was absolutely broken by the knowledge of what happened to Mom, and he’d actually begged his lawyers to get him the worst possible sentence in the country’s worst prison for his part in the Schöneberg Group. It hadn’t happened, and it probably wasn’t going to either, given how well he’d cooperated with the case investigators, but he was so riddled with guilt that he wanted it anyway.
Shay pulled back again, gazing up at me with a faint smile. “Ready to go?” she asked, holding up the car keys.
“Definitely.”
She handed the keys to me. “I figured you’d want to drive, seeing as you haven’t been able to do it for so long.”
I smiled back at her. “Hope I haven’t forgotten how to do it.”
She laughed and took my hand, leading me over to my car. She’d taken good care of it while I was locked up.
Once I was in the driver’s seat, I turned the key in the ignition and released the handbrake, glancing over my shoulder as I reversed out of the parking lot. Shay rested a hand on my leg and wrinkled her forehead when we pulled onto the main road. “I forgot to tell you. They finally caught Nikolai Vinogradov.”
My brows show up. “As in Pyotr?”
“Yup. The Russian police found him last night. He was hiding out in some cabin in the middle of Siberia.”
I flattened my lips into a tight line. “In that case, I hope every horrible rumor I’ve ever heard about Russian prisons is true.”
“Me too.” Shay shivered and rubbed her arms. “I know I shouldn’t say this, but I really hope he dies in the most horrible, painful way ever.”
“You can say that all you want. No one on the planet would blame you,” I said. “Anyway, speaking of Pyotr, have you heard anything new about the other Meat Market clients?”
“Last I heard, the government had a bunch of computer geniuses combing through everything on the site. They’ve managed to track down the most frequent users, but I think a lot of the others will fall through the cracks. Especially the ones in other countries.”
“At least they won’t have anywhere else to go, seeing as the Meat Market was the only place on the dark web that had real red rooms.”
“Yeah, that’s a silver lining,” she replied. She took a deep breath and sat up straight. “Anyway, let’s talk about something less depressing. We should be celebrating your release!”
“I’ve got some good news for you, then,” I said with a grin. “Remember those stock market guys that helped me and my brothers with the Indra thing?”
Shay nodded slowly. “Peter something-rather and… um…”
“Peter Wittrock and Rob Nygard.”
“That’s it.” Shay smiled. “Anyway, what about them?”
“They got in touch and offered me a job at their place. They heard through the grapevine that I was finishing my degree while I was inside, and they figured I might be looking for something in the industry.”
