Chapter 1

Slamming the brakes, I flung open the car door and dashed into the torrential rain.

"Amelia!" I shouted.

My younger sister, Amelia Reinhart, was cold all over. Her clothes clung tightly to her thin and frail body, and her hair was clumping into wet strands.

More alarmingly, the color was completely drained from her face.

"Caleb…" When Amelia saw me, she had only managed to squeeze out a word before she exploded into a series of coughs.

I didn't press her for details. Instead, I carried her back to the car.

Then, I retrieved the albuterol inhaler from the glove box, removed the cap, and pressed it to her lips.

Trembling, Amelia pressed down on the inhaler and took a deep breath.

Ten whole minutes later, her breathing finally stabilized, and some color returned to her pale face.

Taking a dry towel, I looked her in the eye as I dried her hair. "Why were you walking in the rain? What about the minibus?"

Amelia instantly looked away, her eyes avoiding mine.

Lowering her head, she tightly gripped the wet fabric of her clothes as she said in a tiny voice, "The… The minibus broke down. Gary said he's going to get it fixed, so he asked me to go on ahead and walk home on my own…"

"It broke down?" I asked. I looked at her fingertips that had turned purple from the cold, then at her eyes that still refused to look in my direction.

I knew my sister very well. She would never tell lies, but on the rare occasion she did, even her limbs would be trembling.

Instead of exposing her lie, I took a spare blanket and wrapped her tightly with it. "Let's go home for now."

After getting Amelia settled, I took out my phone and called the driver, Gary Brown.

"Mr. Brown, it's raining quite heavily today. Did Amelia get home safe and sound?" I asked in a calm tone.

On the other end of the phone, Gary was as slippery as an old fox. "No worries, Mr. Reinhart! I only left after seeing Amelia enter the house with my own eyes! It's raining cats and dogs today, so I made sure to drive slow and steady. The heat was cranked all the way up, so your sister was totally safe from the cold!"

I glanced in the rearview mirror at Amelia, who was still shivering in the back.

With my fingers tapping lightly on the steering wheel, I asked, "Is that so?"

"Of course! You pay me an extra 1,000 dollars for the trouble every month, so how could I not treat Amelia like my own daughter?" Gary swore up and down without missing a beat.

Instead of exposing him, I simply replied, "Good work."

…

It was late at night as I sat in the study, listening to Amelia's steady breathing coming from her bedroom next door.

I turned on my laptop.

Then, I logged into the management software for the custom-built minibus.

I had paid for that minibus, and it featured real-time GPS tracking.

To ensure Amelia's safety, the car even had four HD surveillance cameras installed.

I checked the route history of the minibus today.

Amelia would have left school at 5:20 pm, but GPS tracking showed that the minibus wasn't even at the designated parking area at the time.

Instead, it was at the entrance of an after-school care center near the neighborhood.

I pulled up the vehicle's surveillance footage around that time.

As soon as the image loaded, I froze with my hand still on the mouse.

A middle-aged woman with curls was sitting in the passenger seat.

I recognized her.

She was Ruby Lory, wife of Paul Hitchborn, the manager of Area 2 at the factory.

She was the resident show-off around the neighborhood, and everyone called her Miss Ruby.

In the surveillance footage, Ruby deftly took two packs of cigarettes from her purse and stuffed them in the pocket of Gary's jacket. "Thanks for the hard work today, Gary. What would we do without this minibus of yours in this awful weather?"