"Do you know what I found on her clothes? In her dying moments, when she feared you'd take the blame, she scrawled 'suicide' with her own blood. She didn't finish the last stroke of 'suicide' before she passed."
Yolanda's eyes snapped open in disbelief, unable to fathom that her adoptive mother, Yvonne, had left behind such a message.
"No, you're lying, you're making this up!" Yolanda's emotions surged.
Arabella pulled out her phone and showed Yolanda the message written on Yvonne's clothes, saying indifferently, "You recognize her handwriting, don't you?"
That hit Yolanda like a ton of bricks, sending her collapsing to the floor.
"You stabbed her with a knife, and the murder weapon was found near the river by your house, matching the wound on her body. It was your family's kitchen knife."
Yolanda looked at Arabella, stunned that she could find and infer all this.
"When you stabbed her, it wasn't fatal. She died from suffocation. I'm guessing when you saw her bleeding, you didn't dare take her to the hospital, afraid they'd ask too many questions. And maybe you were scared she'd wake up, stop your revenge, or even call the cops. So, you dug a hole in your backyard and buried her."
Yolanda couldn't believe Arabella had figured it out, shaking her head frantically, "No, it wasn't like that."
Arabella already knew from her expression that she was right, "Before you buried her alive, she must have begged you not to do something stupid, but rage and fear blinded you. In the end, when she knew there was no escape, she wrote 'suicide' on her clothes, trying to protect you with her last breath."
Even facing death, Yvonne didn't spend her precious moments calling for help, possibly because she was in too much pain, without her phone, or maybe because she wanted to protect Yolanda, to awaken the last bit of conscience in her.
Whatever her reason, she still had her daughter in her heart.
"No, no." Yolanda began to cry, and after a while, she collapsed, sobbing, "She overheard me talking about revenge, always telling me to stop being foolish. I didnât listen, and then she threatened to call the police. She never truly put herself in my shoes!"
Tears streamed down Yolanda's face as she spoke of her grief, "My real parents died, and I went from heiress of Tranquil City to nothing, my life plummeting from heaven to hell. But she never really understood! Instead, she wanted me to forget my past as if it never happened!"
Yolanda felt a mix of hatred, anger, and injustice, "Her false compassion killed her! She was timid and afraid â why did she expect me to be the same?"
Arabella watched her tear herself apart with grief, and asked calmly, "So you killed her?"
"If she hadn't wanted to call the cops, to get them to talk me out of it, I never would have picked up that knife! I just wanted to scare her. But then she said if I was set on revenge, I might as well kill her first.
She thought I wouldn't do it." Yolandaâs voice broke into sobs.
"So you hardened your heart?" Arabella felt she understood what happened.
Seeing Yolanda's emotional collapse, Arabella didn't press further, knowing she wouldn't get more answers now. Coոtent оf She pushed open the interrogation room door and walked away, leaving the crying woman alone.