Chapter 2 - THE CAR WAS MEANT FOR VINCENT
The car I crashed wasn’t mine.
That detail had seemed irrelevant until Detective Harris said the brake line had been deliberately cut.
My Mercedes wouldn’t start that morning.
Vincent’s black sedan had been sitting in the garage.
He was supposed to use it for a meeting downtown, but Vanessa had changed his transportation schedule at the last minute.
I took it instead.
Nobody stopped me.
Nobody warned me.
Forty minutes later, I was spinning across wet pavement while another vehicle slammed into my passenger side.
I remembered the sound.
Metal folding.
Glass exploding.
Then nothing.
Detective Harris met me at the hotel before sunrise.
“You shouldn’t be moving around this much.”
“I’ve had a bad day.”
“That’s an understatement.”
He placed photographs on the desk.
The brake line showed a clean cut.
Not road damage.
Not mechanical failure.
A tool had been used.
“When?”
“We can’t say yet.”
“Who had access?”
“That’s what we’re investigating.”
I already knew the answer.
Half of Vincent’s security staff.
His drivers.
His household employees.
Vanessa.
Matteo.
And Vincent himself.
The thought made me nauseous.
“Do you think someone wanted to kill me?”
Harris hesitated.
“We think someone expected a different person to be driving.”
“Vincent.”
“Yes.”
I shut my eyes.
The accident had not been about me.
My baby had died because I climbed into a car meant for my husband.
The thought was unbearable.
Then my phone rang.
Vincent.
Again.
I rejected it.
A minute later, a voicemail appeared.
I almost deleted it.
Instead, I listened.
“Claire.”
His voice sounded nothing like the man who had checked his watch in the hospital.
“I know.”
Silence.
Then a broken breath.
“I know about the baby.”
My throat closed.
“I went back to the hospital. I spoke to your doctor. Claire, I—”
He stopped.
When he continued, his voice was lower.
“There is no apology big enough for what I did today.”
I pressed the phone away from my ear.
Too late.
Everything was too late.
The voicemail continued.
“Vanessa is no longer working for me.”
That got my attention.
“I found things in her office. Claire, please don’t go home. Don’t go anywhere connected to me until I understand what happened.”
My heartbeat quickened.
Then:
“My car was tampered with.”
He knew.
“Someone expected me to be inside it.”
I covered my mouth.
His final words were almost a whisper.
“And Vanessa had my transportation schedule.”
The voicemail ended.
Five minutes later, Detective Harris received a call.
He listened.
Then looked at me.
“What?”
He lowered his phone.
“Your husband’s assistant is missing.”
“Vanessa?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Security footage shows her leaving her apartment twenty minutes ago.”
“So?”
“She wasn’t alone.”
Harris turned his screen toward me.
Vanessa stepped into the back of an SUV.
The man holding the door was Matteo Moretti.
Vincent’s uncle.
And suddenly I understood something terrifying.
May you like
Vanessa hadn’t merely been controlling my fifteen minutes with my husband.
She had been controlling his schedule for someone else.
