Page 85 of Ruthless Regret

"But how? How could they make me change my testimony so completely?"

"I don't know. But this is important. Whatever happened between these two interviews—that's what we need to figure out."

He restarts the recording, and we watch in tense silence. My younger self describes the scene, now agreeing that Zainhad a knife. There's no trace of my disagreement from the first interview. And all the while, Ramsey stands in the background, his expression unreadable but his eyes never leaving me.

"Yes," my younger self says on screen, her voice hollow. "Yes, he was holding a knife."

I remember saying them, but now, knowing the truth, it sounds like a lie. Like I’ve rehearsed the words.

And just like that, a fragment of memory flashes through my mind.

Ramsey's voice, stern but reassuring: "You're confused, Ashley. It's normal after what you've been through. But we need you to really think. To remember clearly. For Jason."

I gasp, the force of it making Zain tense beside me.

"I ... I think I remember something. Ramsey talking to me. Telling me I was confused, that I needed to remember clearly."

His eyes sharpen. "Do you think he could have been using your emotional state against you?"

The realization hits me hard. "He made me doubt myself. Made me think I wasn't remembering right."

"And in the state you were in, you'd be susceptible to suggestion." Zain’s voice is grim. "They had their suspect. They just needed to make sure the story fit."

"They used my trauma, my love for Jason, to make me say what they wanted. To close the case quickly."

We sit in silence for a moment, then Zain speaks, his voice low and intense.

"They didn't care about the truth. They just wanted to wrap it up neatly."

"But if they were willing to do this, what else might they have overlooked? What other evidence did they ignore?"

Zain's expression darkens. "The entire investigation was a fucking joke. They dismissed every piece of evidence if it didn't fit their narrative."

"But how do we prove that?"

Zain runs a hand through his hair, then gives an abrupt nod, as though he’s come to a decision in his head. "I have the case files. Not the sanitized version they presented at the trial, but everything. Interview transcripts, evidence logs, forensic reports—all of it."

“What? How?”

“It doesn’t matter how. But if we go through it all, we can make a timeline. Everything that happened that night, everything that happened during the investigation. Then we look for gaps, inconsistencies."

"We need to find out more about Ramsey," I add, the detective's face flashing in my mind. "Why was he so determined to pin this on you? Was it just about closing the case quickly, or was there something more?"

“I have someone looking into him. If anyone can find anything that might explain his actions, he can."

My eyes stray back to the video, frozen on my younger self’s face.

What really happened the night Jason and Louisa were killed? How much did the detectives miss—or deliberately overlook—in their rush to close the case?

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

ZAIN

Ashley leans in,squinting at the digital files we've been poring over for hours. I swipe through another document, the frustration building with each passing second.

"This is getting us nowhere," she says, voicing the same thought that's been gnawing at me.

I lean back in my chair, and rub the back of my neck, trying to ease the kink from being bent over the laptop. "There has to be something we're missing. Some connection we're not seeing."

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