Apparently I don’t exist anymore

Diego POV

Three days after the funeral, I drove out to the salvage yard where they'd towed what was left of Aysha's car.

I told the manager I was there on behalf of the insurance company, slipped him enough cash to stop asking questions, and spent twenty minutes photographing every angle of the wreckage before anyone official showed up to do the same.

I was looking for proof.

The front end was destroyed, the kind of damage that matched being struck hard from behind at high speed. But it was the underside that told the real story. I crouched down, flashlight in hand, and found what I already suspected I'd find.

The brake line had been cut.

Someone hadn't just run her off the road. Someone had made sure that even if she survived the first attempt, she wouldn't survive the second.

I took pictures of everything before I left, my hands steady despite the anger building low and cold in my chest.

Reyes had a friend, a mechanic named Solomon who used to work forensics before he got tired of testifying in cases that never went anywhere. I brought him the photographs the next morning, laid them across his workbench, and watched his face change as he studied them one at a time.

"This wasn't an accident," he said finally.

"I know."

"Whoever cut this knew exactly what they were doing. Precise cut, positioned so it wouldn't fail immediately, so it would fail somewhere down the road, somewhere that would look natural. Combine that with a hit and run and you're looking at two separate attempts to make sure the job got finished."

"Can you trace who might have done it?"

Solomon shook his head slowly.

"Not from this alone. But if you can find out who had access to that car in the days before the accident, that's your list of suspects."

I already had a short list forming in my head. The house staff. Adrian. Mira. Anyone who could get close enough to the garage without raising questions.

I drove straight back to the clinic after that, my mind working through every angle, and found Aysha sitting up in bed with a tray of untouched food beside her.

"You're not eating," I said.

"I'm not hungry."

I set the folder of photographs on the bed beside her, and she looked at it, then at me, something wary crossing her face.

"What is that?"

"Proof that someone wanted you dead badly enough to plan it twice."

I laid the pictures out one by one, explaining what Solomon had found, watching her face go pale as the reality of it settled in fully for the first time.

"Who has access to my car," she said quietly, more to herself than to me.

"That's what I need you to help me figure out."

She was quiet for a long moment, staring down at the photographs of her own mangled brake line.

"Martha wouldn't," she said finally. "She's never even been near the garage."

"What about staff. Drivers. Mechanics Adrian uses for his own cars?"

"There's a man named Curtis who services all of Adrian's vehicles. He's been with the family for years."

"I'll look into him." I quickly sent a text to one of my guys to look into it.

"And Mira." Her voice hardened on the name. "She had access to the house. She had access to everything, Diego. She practically lived there toward the end."

I sat down slowly in the chair beside her bed.

"You think Mira did this?"

"I think Mira wanted me gone long before that truck ever found me," Aysha said. "I heard her, Diego. That night. She asked him why I was still around. She said it like I was an inconvenience standing between her and everything she wanted."

"That's motive. It's not proof."

"Then help me find proof."

I studied her, the fire building behind her eyes even through the exhaustion and the bruising still fading across her face.

"I will," I said. "But it's going to take time. Building a case against someone like Mira, someone close to a man like Adrian and also with Adrian's resources, that's not something we can do overnight."

"I have time." She pushed the tray of food aside and sat up straighter, wincing but holding my gaze steady. "Apparently I have all the time in the world now. I'm dead, remember?"

I almost smiled at that, despite everything.

"There's something else," I said, pulling one more photograph from the folder. "Solomon pulled a partial print off the brake line housing before it got too corroded from the crash. It's not enough to identify anyone on its own. But if we ever get a name to compare it against, it could be the thing that closes this whole case."

Aysha took the photograph from my hand, studying the faint smudge of ridges barely visible against the metal.

"Then we get a name," she said.

I nodded slowly, already turning it over in my mind, already thinking about how far this was going to take us before it was finished.

"How do we even begin building a case against someone that connected," Aysha asked, setting the photograph down carefully on the blanket. "Adrian's family has lawyers for their lawyers. If Mira really is behind this, she has resources most people never even see."

"Then we work quietly," I said. "No sudden moves. We build this with the same patience whoever planned your accident had. Piece by piece, until there's nothing left for them to talk their way out of."

"That could take years."

"It might."

She was quiet for a moment, staring down at her bandaged arm, at the thin scar already forming where the IV had been.

"I don't have anywhere else to be," she said finally, something hard and resolved settling into her voice. "Apparently I don't exist anymore, remember? I have all the time in the world to do this right."

"That's the spirit I was hoping for."

"Don't sound so pleased with yourself."

I almost smiled despite everything, the first real lightness I'd felt since that phone call at 3:52 that morning. I suddenly got a text from my phone and I guess my reaction changed.

“What happened?” She asked trying to look at what I’m staring at on my phone.

"Seems like there's one more thing for you to know," I said.

She looked up at me.

"What."

She waited, watching my face carefully, the same watchfulness I was already starting to recognize as the beginning of who she was becoming.

"Curtis. The mechanic who services Adrian's cars." I hesitated, watching her face carefully. "He put in for early retirement two days after your accident. Packed up and left the city without telling anyone where he was going."

Aysha's expression went completely still.

"That's not a coincidence."

"No," I said. "I don't think it is."

"Find out where he went," she said quietly. "If he's the one who did this, if he cut that brake line with his own hands, I want to know why. And I want to know who paid him to do it."

"I'll start tonight."

She reached over and took the folder of photographs back from me, tucking it carefully against her chest like something worth protecting.

"Thank you, Diego," she said. "For believing me. For not treating this like grief talking instead of instinct."

"I've never once doubted your instincts," I said. "Not since the day I met you."

She held my gaze a moment longer than either of us probably intended, something unspoken passing between us that neither of us was ready to name yet, before she looked back down at the folder in her lap.

"Then let's find out who wanted me gone," she said.