Chapter one- The name behind the accident

Chloe's POV

The alarm went off at seven-thirty. My hand shot out and killed it before the second ring. Even that small sound felt like it was scraping the inside of my skull. I wanted to disappear under the blanket and pretend the day didn’t exist. But the thought came anyway, the same one that had been waking me for months: You can’t sleep. The real suspect is still out there.

I pushed the covers off. Twenty-seven years old, and my body already felt used up. I reached for the jug of water, drank, and wiped my mouth. Then, I walked the short hallway to my mother’s room.

Mom was still asleep. The left side of her face sagged the way it had since the night the car hit her. The doctors called it severe traumatic brain injury with right-sided hemiplegia. I called it the thing that took my real mother and left this fragile, childlike version behind. One whole side of her body barely moved. Her right arm stayed curled against her chest. When she spoke, the words came slow and broken, like a little girl trying hard to remember how language worked. She still knew me. She still smiled for me. That almost made it worse.

I sat on the edge of the bed and touched her shoulder.

“Good morning, Mom.”

Her eyes opened. When they found my face, the good side of her mouth lifted.

“Is that… my kind… beautiful daughter?” she said, each word careful and spaced out.

Something tight and painful pulled under my ribs. I smiled anyway.

“Yes. It’s your kind, beautiful daughter.”

I slid my arm under her shoulders and helped her sit up, then eased her into the wheelchair. Her right leg dragged like dead weight. I had gotten used to carrying it.

“You’re doing better every day,” I told her as I fixed the footrests. “The physiotherapy here in Chicago is really helping. I’m so glad we moved here.”

The lie sat in my mouth like something rotten. We hadn’t come to Chicago for physiotherapy. We had come because I finally followed the trail to the McCartney family. Someone with that last name had been behind the wheel the night a car slammed into my mother two years ago and never stopped. The police had closed the case too fast, too quietly. I wasn’t finished with it.

I opened the small organizer and shook out the morning pills. Mom frowned at the white and blue ones.

“Not… yellow,” she said. “Yellow ones... are for bedtime.”

My throat closed. It was seven in the morning. She still couldn’t tell.

“Mom, it’s morning. Not night. See?” I pointed toward the window where daylight was already coming in. “The yellow ones are only for nighttime, right before bed. These are the morning ones.”

She looked at the pills, then at the window, then back at me. After a long second, she nodded.

“Okay. If you say so. Anything… my daughter says… is right.”

That half-smile of hers undid me every time. I had to look away for a second before I could smile back.

Then came the routine I had done every day for two years. I fed her oatmeal, bathed her, supporting the side that wouldn’t hold itself up, talking the whole time so she wouldn’t get scared. I dressed her. I settled her against the pillows and turned the television on low.

I crouched in front of the wheelchair and took her good hand.

“I’m going out for a little while. Not more than an hour. I promise.”

Her fingers tightened hard.

“Don’t go. Something… bad. Stay. Today… stay.”

I kissed her temple and breathed in the clean smell of the soap I had just used on her. My eyes burned.

“Nothing bad is going to happen. You take a nap. I’ll be back before you know it.”

I locked the apartment door and stood in the hallway longer than I should have. The guilt of leaving her alone sat on my chest like a stone. I still hadn’t found a caregiver I trusted in this city. I needed one. God, I needed one.

I took a taxi to the prison on the edge of the city.

By the time I sat across from Jeremiah, my heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my teeth. He cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve said it before. I hope you can forgive me.”

I stared at him. Then the words started coming, quiet at first, then harder.

“My mother had emergency surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain. Twenty-three stitches across her scalp. Her right arm and leg still don’t work. She can’t walk. She can’t cut her own food. She can’t tell morning from night. She talks like a child. She needs help to use the bathroom. She needs help to get dressed. She needs help to take the pills that keep another stroke from killing her.”

Tears ran down my face. I didn’t wipe them. My breath kept catching.

“How does ‘I’m sorry’ fix any of that?”

Jeremiah looked down.

“I should have been more careful that night—”

“You weren’t the one driving.”

His head snapped up.

I leaned in. “You turned yourself in three days later and took the blame. But it wasn’t you. Someone from the McCartney family was behind the wheel, and they paid you to say it was your fault.”

“That’s not true.”

“Look me in the eye and say it again.”

He did. “It was me. I worked security for them, but that night, it was me. I hit her.”

My voice shook. “Then explain how your five-year-old son suddenly got the best cancer treatment money can buy. Explain how your wife opened a huge bridal store in one of the biggest malls in Chicago. You were a security guard. You could never have afforded any of that.”

Something cracked in his face. Fear. Guilt. Both.

“This is madness,” he said. “You’ve gone too far looking into my family. That’s the detectives work.”

My voice rose, raw and broken. “You stood in front of a judge two years ago and lied under oath. So yes—I can be the detective. I’ll go as high and as low as I have to.”

I forced the volume back down. The next words came out like they were being dragged from me.

“Please, Jeremiah. Tell me the truth. Give me a name. Who was it? Was it Spencer McCartney?”

For half a second, something moved in his eyes. Just a flicker. But I saw it.

Spencer McCartney. The only son. The heir to the entire McCartney empire. People said he was quiet, hard to read, the kind of man who never raised his voice because he never needed to. There were stories that he could end a business or a person’s future with one phone call. Dangerous in the cold, expensive way that money and silence could be dangerous.

Jeremiah’s face had gone pale.

I leaned closer. My hands were clenched so tight they hurt.

“It’s him, isn’t it?”