Chapter 1

Lucian’s voice barely faded before my mother-in-law, Camila Anderson, chuckled, playfully teasing him for dragging up ancient history just to ruin the mood.

My wife, Stella Anderson, gave a helpless little headshake, her eyes holding a silent, doting fondness.

Looking at the three of them, completely unfazed, my head began to ring with a deafening buzz. A massive wave of surreal absurdity crashed over me.

Inside Lucian's seemingly casual, laid-back account were the speeding car that fled the scene, the stretch of road where security cameras happened to be under maintenance, and the coroner's report confirming that life had slipped away in a single second.

Slowly, painfully, the pieces began to fall into place, each one matching the case details I had spent an entire week painstakingly piecing together five years ago. Back then, after finding my daughter, Evelyn West, dead in a freezing, filthy storm drain, I had gone days without sleep, consumed by grief and driven nearly out of my mind.

Unable to handle the sheer impact of Lucian's words any longer, a violent wave of nausea hit me, and I doubled over, dry heaving violently.

An awkward, heavy silence filled the room.

Camila's expression darkened. She curled her lip and muttered an uncharitable complaint under her breath, "Didn't the doctors say his depression was cured? Who is he putting on a show for?"

My head was spinning, and the world was blurring around me from the violent retching, but I didn't have a second to care about her unfair jab.

I just lunged forward, my fingers clawing desperately onto Stella’s arm to keep myself upright, staring straight into her eyes.

Deep down in her gaze, there was a flash of instinctive pity for my sickness, paired with a faint, barely concealed flicker of annoyance.

There was that familiar helplessness and doting warmth she always reserved for Lucian.

The only thing missing was a single ounce of heartbreak from a mother who had lost her child.

I refused to believe it. There was no way she didn't catch the glaring red flags in what Lucian just said.

Yet Stella was sitting there so completely calm as if she had heard this story a million times before.

Calm as if she had known the truth all along.

My chest turned ice-cold as a terrifying realization clawed its way to the surface. "Stella."

I gripped her sleeve with every ounce of strength I had left, my eyes filled with a shattering, fragile desperation.

"That street where Lucian went joyriding five years ago, was it the back alley behind Bright Horizon Preschool?"

The pity froze right on Stella’s face, and she stared at me in absolute shock.

Lucian reacted even worse. With a loud crash, his chair tipped backward, and his expression instantly shifted from arrogant mockery to extreme panic.

Realizing how suspicious his reaction looked, he forced down the shock and confusion swimming in his eyes, managing a tight, awkward laugh.

"Spencer, you must be hearing things. I didn't mention any specific street..."

I forced myself up on shaky legs, my voice sounded hollow and distant, drifting from the edge of reality like a broken mix of laughter and sobs.

"Five years ago, every security camera along the street where the hit-and-run occurred just happened to be down for maintenance.

"Purple fragments of a custom car wrap were recovered from the evidence collected during my daughter’s autopsy.

"Do I really need to spell it out for you?"

Every single word dripped with bleeding memories.

Every single detail pushed me closer to the absolute edge of a mental breakdown.

The forced smile completely vanished from Lucian's face, and raw panic flashed in his eyes.

A second later, as if remembering something, his voice spiked into a shrill defense.

"No way, stop talking nonsense! You forgot all about your kid because your brain was fried from all those heavy psychiatric meds back then, and now you're trying to frame me..."

Lucian's words hit my chest like a sledgehammer, smashing my heart into bloody pieces.

I never expected this. I had been terrified that Stella, being a top-tier psychiatrist, would feel like a total failure if she couldn't fix my mental health issues.

So, I told her a white lie.

I told her the heavy medication side effects had wiped out my memories of Evelyn.

I just never imagined that my kindness would end up as the sharpest knife they could use to stab me right in the back in front of everyone.

At that moment, Stella finally realized that I had never, not for a single second, forgotten Evelyn's death.

Her hand trembled as she reached out, trying to wipe the tears away from the corner of my eye.

I jerked back to avoid her touch. Her hand hung frozen in midair while she desperately tried to keep her voice smooth and soothing.

"Spencer, please calm down. You're just experiencing a severe hallucination from your medication. Lucian was just making up a stupid fictional story..."

A hollow, broken laugh escaped my throat, tearing out in a wet sob as hot tears spilled over.

"Stella, do you really think I would have been brave enough to have another kid with you if I were still on those meds?

"I stopped taking them a long time ago. I’m completely sober, and I’m not hallucinating."

I took a slow step backward, my eyes burning red, the taste of bitter bile rising in my throat.

"I'm calling the police."

I turned around to walk out, but the second I moved, a sharp, biting pain pierced straight into my arm.