Echoes in the Rear View

Chapter 6

Echoes in the Rear View

 Adrian POV

​The living room felt thick with tension, the metallic taste of fear lingering on Vanessa's tongue.

 holding out the sleek black screen like a loaded weapon she expected me to fire. Neither of us reached for it. We couldn't. For the last twenty minutes, a soft chime rang through the sparsely decorated room.

The silence between us hadn't been filled with the rush of our shared secret, but with a  freezing, crushing sense of doom.

​"Who is it this time, Adrian?" Vanessa whispered,

her voice deprived of its usual honeyed edge. The sharp, nervous twitch in her jaw betrayed her. She dropped her hand, letting the phone rest on the marble-topped coffee table between us, its surface blinking playfully with a steady, pulsing notification light. 

"Look at the logs. Is it another clip? Are they watching the driveway again?"

​I didn't answer right away.

 I dragged a heavy hand down my face, my skin cold and damn, feeling the rough facial hair I hadn't bothered to shave in 3 days. My muscles were coiled so tight they ached.

 I don't know”, i muttered my voice raspy,

grating against my throat.I stared down at the dark glass of the phone. They don't know anything yet and I intend to keep it that way.

 They don't use usernames. It’s always an unplanned proxy routing through a dozen different servers overseas.

 One second it’s an IP address originating from downtown, the next it’s bouncing off a relay station in Zurich. You can't track a ghost, Vanessa. I've tried. God knows I've spent thousands hiring private digital forensics experts who ended up looking at me like I was losing my mind."

​"Well, somebody is sitting on that  video evidence," she snapped back, her eyes narrowing as fear briefly surged into anger. She hugged her arms tightly around her stomach, reflexively shielding the child from the anchor tying us to this nightmare.

"Somebody watched that alley six years ago. Somebody knows every single move,detail,about what happened that night. If this gets out, Adrian, we aren't just talking about a scandal or a ruined career. You’re looking at thirty years to life for unlawful killing,Vivian will know who husband truly is and I’m... I’m an accomplice to covering up a violent felony. They’d tear us apart piece by piece."

​"You don't need to remind me Vanessa," I shot back, 

the bitterness tasting like bile on the back of my tongue.

​I was the one who lived with the shadow weight of that night pressed against my chest. 

I was the one who had traded my entire soul who had willingly shattered my marriage, broken Vivian’s heart into a million irreparable pieces, and acted like a cold, unfeeling monster just to keep that video from seeing the light of day. The anonymous blackmailer’s terms had been absolute, brutal and unyielding, Vivian you betrayed her out of pure selfishness. If you ever tell her the truth, or if she ever finds out why you destroyed your own life, the video goes straight to the major crime unit.

​Every single day,thinking how I will look into my wife's eyes and act like everything is fine when she comes back from her trip I had to look into Vivian’s eyes.

unconditional love, now drained out by betrayal and pretending I was a stranger. 

I had to swallow the scream rising in my throat every time she cried herself to sleep on the edge of the guest bed, believing I had thrown away six years of our life for a cheap, shameful affair with her best friend.

​A sharp, vibrating buzz sliced through the heavy silence.

​Both of us were tense. Then the phone  lit up again. A single line of preview text flashed across the locked screen Adrian. You're running out of time to keep her under control.

​"Pick it up," Vanessa whispered, her breath hitching, her eyes wide and glassy with unshed tears. "Just read what they want now. Maybe... maybe they want  money. Maybe you can pay them off. There has to be a price. Everyone has a price."

​"No," I said, shaking my head slowly as a cold sweat broke out across my spine.

"We tried that five months ago. Remember what happened? They sent a photo of Vivian walking out of her downtown office thirty seconds after I tried to wire fifty grand to an offshore account. They don't want money, Vanessa. They want control. They want to watch us twist."

I tensed,a knot tightening deep in my gut. It was nearly six o'clock in the evening,there was no emergency client scheduled for tomorrow's meeting.

“What wrong vanessa said” stepping closer to me, peering over my shoulder.

Work i lied slowly tho the word felt heavy and false.i couldnt tell her anything

Vanessa, I have to go. We will talk later.

​"Go, then," Vanessa said, letting out a shaky breath as she stepped back and wrapped a soft wool jacket  tighter around her shoulders.

 The panic in her eyes was palpable, a desperate desire to be left alone with her own spiraling thoughts. "Just... don't stay out too long. And for God's sake, clear your digital footprint before you leave the house. I can't take another night of feeling like someone is standing right outside the bedroom window."

​"Lock the heavy duty lock behind me," I said, grabbing my car keys from the counter. The metal felt ice cold against my palm.

​I walked out the front door into the biting autumn chill, my boots crunching softly on the gravel driveway.

 A strange unease settled over me when i noticed the curtains moving despite the lock window swallowed by thick, rolling fog that drifted in from the riverbanks. As I unlocked my car and slid into the driver's seat, I looked up toward the second floor window of the study.

​The curtains were pulled back just an inch. For a fleeting, heart stopping second, I could have sworn I saw a faint, rhythmic blinking light from the treeline across the street, a camera shutter, or a signal.

​My fingers lingered over the ignition. As I put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, my phone buzzed one last time. I looked down at the dash screen. It wasn't an email from the office. It was a direct text message from an unknown local number, waiting for me on my personal line.

​You think you're escaping to the office to protect her, Adrian? Look in your rear view mirror.

My foot slammed hard onto the brake pedal in the middle of an empty street, my heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped animal cage slowly with trembling hands into the rear view mirror.