Chapter 3
Richard took the phone from my hand like it weighed a hundred pounds.
The video had no sound.
It did not need any.
Charlotte stood in the driveway, wearing jeans and a blue sweater, one hand wrapped around the bracelet now in my palm.
Evelyn blocked her path.
The security chief, Marcus Vale, came up behind Charlotte.
Charlotte tried to walk around them.
Evelyn grabbed her arm.
Marcus looked toward the house.
Then a black SUV rolled forward.
Too fast.
Charlotte turned.
The screen jerked as whoever recorded it stepped backward.
Then the SUV struck Charlotte.
The ballroom erupted.
Richard shouted for everyone to get back.
Charlotte covered her mouth.
I could not look at the impact.
I had imagined it for three years.
Seeing it made my chest feel hollow.
Richard’s voice came out raw.
“Where did this come from?”
“A former rehab nurse,” I said. “Her name is Linda Mercer. She said someone paid the clinic to suppress memory triggers.”
Charlotte looked up sharply.
“Memory triggers?”
I nodded.
“You kept asking about the lake. About me. They told you those were trauma dreams.”
Evelyn whispered, “This is illegal.”
Richard turned on her.
“You dare say that word?”
She stepped back.
Marcus, the security chief, appeared near the ballroom doors.
He must have heard the commotion.
The moment he saw the video in Richard’s hand, he turned to leave.
I shouted, “That’s him.”
Richard’s guards moved fast.
Marcus ran.
Two servers jumped aside as he shoved through the hall.
I ran after him before I thought.
My shoes slipped on polished marble.
Marcus was bigger, faster, trained.
But he had one problem.
He expected me to be afraid.
I tackled him near the service corridor.
We hit the floor hard.
Pain shot through my shoulder.
Marcus grabbed my throat.
“You should have stayed gone.”
Then Richard’s guards pulled him off me.
Charlotte screamed my name from the hallway.
I sat up coughing.
Richard stood over Marcus.
“Why?”
Marcus laughed once, blood on his lip.
“You should ask your sister.”
Evelyn had disappeared.
Police arrived within minutes because half the guests had called 911.
The celebration became a crime scene.
Charlotte refused to leave until I was checked by paramedics.
Richard watched her watch me.
Something in his face broke again.
Not grief.
Regret.
At the hospital, Charlotte sat in a wheelchair beside my bed while doctors checked my bruised shoulder.
Richard stood near the door.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
I looked at him.
“You owe her answers.”
Charlotte reached for my hand.
Richard nodded slowly.
“I know.”
Then his phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
His face went still.
He put it on speaker.
Evelyn’s voice came through.
“Richard, if you let that boy talk, Charlotte will learn why her mother really died.”
Charlotte’s fingers tightened around mine.
May you like
Her mother had died two months before the accident.
Or so everyone thought.
