Chapter 3

I was dragged along behind Serena's car as it tore through the streets, the scenery outside the windows blurring into nothing. She kept tapping the steering wheel, muttering under her breath.

"There's still time. There has to be..."

The car's speakerphone clicked on, and Kieran's voice filled the cabin. "Ms. Collier, we still haven't found any trace of Mr. Whitmore. It really looks like he might be—"

"Useless!" Serena slammed her palm against the steering wheel.

"Keep looking! Pull every security camera in the city if you have to!"

After she hung up, her breathing grew faster and more ragged. Then her eyes lit up with that look I knew all too well, the one she got when she thought she had the winning hand.

She dialed Declan's number so fast her fingers nearly slipped, her voice trembling with excitement. "Declan, I just figured it out! That old woman is still in the psychiatric ward. She's the one person Fletcher cares about more than anything."

Something deep inside me lurched. The image of my mother's frail, wasted body flashed before my eyes. After all these years, Serena still wanted to use my mother as leverage against me.

I screamed at her to stop, but she couldn't hear me. She was too caught up in the thrill of closing in on her lead, and she floored the gas pedal toward the hospital.

Serena's heels clicked sharply against the stained concrete floor. The hallway stank of disinfectant and urine, the two smells mixing into something sharp and nauseating. She pressed her hand over her nose and mouth and called out.

"Someone get over here! Where's Fletcher Whitmore's mother? Bring her out to see me!"

A middle-aged man in wire-rimmed glasses came hurrying down the corridor. "Ms. Collier, what brings you all the way—"

"Save it!" Serena cut him off. "Which room is Fletcher's mother in? I'm taking her with me."

Dr. James Langford's expression froze. A thin sheen of sweat broke out across his forehead. "Well, you see, you may not have heard, but Mrs. Whitmore Senior—"

"She what? Declan paid a hundred thousand in medical fees just last month! Take me to her right now!"

The thought made me sick. That hundred thousand had probably gone straight into Declan and Dr. Langford's pockets.

Dr. Langford fumbled with his computer, pulling up the records with shaking hands. The death certificate on the screen was impossible to miss.

"Date of death: March 15th, 2023. Cause: Severe malnutrition."

"M-Ms. Collier, Mrs. Whitmore Senior died two years ago."

"Bullshit!"

Serena snatched the mouse from him and stared at the screen. Her eyes went wide, and I could see her hands starting to tremble.

But a second later, she let out a cold, humorless laugh. "Very clever, Dr. Langford. How much did Fletcher pay you to fake these records?"

She leaned in close and dropped her voice to barely above a whisper. "Do you have any idea how many years you'd get for forging medical documents?"

Dr. Langford's knees nearly buckled. "Ms. Collier, I swear this was auto-generated by the system! You can look up the death certificate number yourself. It's all on file."

"Shut up!" Serena slammed the laptop shut and headed straight for the door.

"I'll get to the bottom of this myself. And if I find out you people have been conspiring against me..."

She didn't finish the sentence, but Dr. Langford already looked like he'd seen a ghost. I knew exactly what he was afraid of. He was the one who had injected my mother with an overdose of sedatives all those years ago.

When Serena started the car again, her hands were shaking so badly she could barely grip the wheel. She called Declan, but her voice came out impossibly soft.

"Sweetheart, don't worry. I'll find that old woman. Fletcher always did whatever she told him to."

I hovered in the passenger seat, watching the tenderness in her eyes as she spoke to him, and hatred surged through every part of me like a rising tide.

If the dead could cry, I would have.