Chapter 10

I couldn’t shake my father’s words.

He was there.

Those three syllables had carved themselves into my skull, echoing every time I blinked.

By morning, I was still replaying them in my mind, trying to convince myself I’d misheard, that his illness and medication had scrambled reality.

But deep down, I knew he hadn’t been confused. He’d been terrified.

And that terrified me.

I skipped breakfast, my stomach too knotted for food, and went straight to the nonprofit office.

The building felt different now. Every creak of the floorboards, every flicker of light carried a weight I hadn’t noticed before.

I paused at the door, half-expecting another envelope taped to it, but this time it was clean.

Inside, though, something was waiting for me.

On my desk, lying like an accusation, was a plain brown envelope. No name. No address. Just sitting there.

My throat went dry. My hands shook as I opened it.

Inside was a single black-and-white photograph.

The crash scene.

Twisted metal. Shattered glass. A car wrapped around a tree I knew too well. And in the blurred corner of the frame, barely visible but impossible to ignore, was a silhouette. Broad shoulders, tall frame. Familiar.

Daniel.

The air rushed out of me. My vision swam.

No note. No explanation. Just the photo.

I locked myself in the office bathroom and stared at the picture under the harsh fluorescent lights. It could’ve been anyone, I told myself.

Just a bystander, a paramedic, even a shadow warped by the flames. But my heart knew better. My heart recognized him even in the blur.

And if Daniel had been there, why had he never told me?

I pressed my palms against the cold sink, trying to steady my breathing. My father’s whispers, Daniel’s silence, Pierce’s threats, they all tangled into one choking rope around my throat.

Was Daniel protecting me? Or was he the reason everything had fallen apart?

By the time I left the bathroom, Ellen was waiting at my desk, concern etched across her face.

“Jane, are you okay? You look pale.”

I shoved the photo back into the envelope, forcing a brittle smile. “I’m fine. Just… lack of sleep.”

Her eyes flicked to the envelope, but she didn’t press. “Well, there’s more bad news. Another donor pulled out. Westbridge Bank.”

My knees nearly buckled. “What?”

“They said their board decided to redirect funding. But when I pressed further, one of their reps admitted there was… pressure. Again.”

Corporate pressure. The phrase was turning into a curse.

I bit down hard on my lip. “Pierce,” I whispered without meaning to.

Ellen frowned. “Who?”

“Nothing,” I lied quickly. “I’ll handle it.”

That night, Daniel called.

I almost didn’t answer. But a part of me still needed to hear his voice, to gauge the truth in it.

“Jane,” he said, his tone low, careful. “I know about Westbridge. I can try to fix it.”

The words made my stomach twist. He was always ready with solutions, but never with answers.

“Did you know they’d pull out?” I asked sharply.

“No,” he said quickly. “But I can make a call.”

“You can always make a call,” I snapped. “Like magic. Like you know the game before it’s even played. Why is that, Daniel? Why do you always seem to know?”

Silence crackled on the line. Then, softly: “Because I’ve been through this before. I know how Pierce operates.”

“Then tell me,” I whispered, my hand shaking around the phone. “Tell me what really happened with Dad. Tell me the truth about the accident.”

Another silence. Heavy. Crushing.

Finally, he said, “Not over the phone.”

And then he hung up.

I wanted to throw the phone across the room. I wanted to scream until my throat tore. But instead, I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the photo again. The blurred figure at the wreck. The shadows. The truth I couldn’t touch.

Sleep didn’t come. Instead, memories did. Daniel, at seventeen, was holding my hand under the bleachers. Daniel, at nineteen, promised he’d never leave me. Daniel at twenty-one, gone without explanation.

And now, Daniel, at thirty-eight, shows up in my office as if no time had passed, offering protection but carrying secrets like knives behind his back.

The next day, I tried to distract myself with work, but the children’s laughter in the hallways of the nonprofit felt like echoes from a world I no longer belonged to.

Every file I touched, every donor report I read, was another reminder of how quickly everything was unraveling.

Around noon, the hospital called. Dad’s condition had worsened slightly during the night. Not critical, but they advised me to visit.

I left immediately.

When I reached his room, he was asleep, his chest rising and falling beneath thin blankets. I sat beside him, clutching his hand.

“Dad,” I whispered. “I need you to tell me more. Please. You said Daniel was there. Why? What did he do? What aren’t you telling me?”

But his lips didn’t move. His grip didn’t tighten. He slept on, unreachable.

On my way back to the nonprofit that evening, the city streets felt sharper somehow, as though every shadow held eyes.

I kept glancing over my shoulder, half-expecting the faceless man from before to appear again.

By the time I reached the office, dusk had fallen. The building was quiet, the staff gone. I unlocked the door and froze.

Another envelope.

This one was on my chair.

I tore it open, heart in my throat. Inside wasn’t a photo this time, but a copy of my father’s medical report. The date of the accident, the time of his arrival, and the injuries sustained. But someone had marked sections in red ink.

Time of accident: 9:47 p.m.

Time of ambulance arrival: 10:25 p.m.

A nearly forty-minute gap.

I stared at the numbers, my breath coming fast. Forty minutes. What had happened at that time? Why had it been erased from every conversation, every record until now?

At the bottom of the report, scribbled in the same red ink, were four words:

Ask him yourself, Jane.

That night, sleep was impossible again. I sat by the window of my apartment, the city lights blurring as tears burned my eyes.

Every road pointed back to Daniel. Every breadcrumb led me closer to a truth I wasn’t sure I wanted.

Yet, even in the middle of all that fear, a small part of me still remembered the way he’d stood up for me at Brookfield, how his voice had carried steel on my behalf.

Could both things be true? Could he be both my protector and my destroyer?

At 2:13 a.m., my phone rang. An unknown number.

I answered, my pulse thundering.

A distorted voice, low and deliberate, filled my ear. “You want answers, Jane? Ask him what really happened the night your father bled on the asphalt.”

My blood ran cold. “Who is this?”

But the line went dead.

I sat frozen in the dark, phone still pressed to my ear, the city silent around me.

Someone wanted me to uncover the truth. Someone wanted me to confront Daniel.

And now I had no choice.

Because if my father was right, and Daniel had been there the night of the accident…

Then the man I once loved wasn’t just hiding secrets.

He was part of them.