Chapter 5

AMBER

The rain began to fall just as I reached the edge of the town. It was a heavy and cold rain that washed over my windshield. I could barely see the road ahead. My heart was still racing from the events at the lake house. I had left Justine screaming in the dark. 

I had given Mark the location of the man who betrayed us both. I expected to hear the sound of a gunshot echoing through the trees. I expected to see fire in my rearview mirror. But as I pulled over to the side of the road to breathe, there was only the sound of the storm.

I sat there for several minutes. I was waiting for the police or an ambulance to pass me. I was waiting for the world to explode. My phone was still buzzing with notifications from the live stream I had just ended. The internet was on fire. 

The name Thorne was being dragged through the mud by thousands of strangers. I should have felt happy. I should have felt like I had won everything. But inside, I felt hollow. I was a mother without a child and a wife without a home.

A pair of bright headlights appeared in my mirror. A black SUV slowed down and pulled in right behind my car. I knew that car. It was Mark. My hands gripped the steering wheel. I did not know what to expect. Did he kill him? Was I now an accomplice to a murder?

Mark stepped out of his car. He did not have his gun in his hand. He was not running. He walked slowly through the pouring rain until he reached my window. I rolled it down. The cold water splashed onto my face and my clothes. Mark looked different. The rage I saw earlier was gone. In its place was a look of deep and quiet exhaustion. His eyes were red, but he was no longer crying.

"Is it done?" I asked. My voice was a whisper.

Mark looked at the dark road leading back to the lake house. "I did not even go inside," he said.

I was shocked. "You did not see him? You let him stay there?"

Mark leaned his arms against the door of my car and looked at me. "I stood at the front door. I heard him screaming. I heard him begging for you to let him out. I looked at the gun on my seat and I realized something, Amber. If I kill him, I lose. If I go to jail for a coward like Justine, then he wins. He takes my life just like he took yours. He is not worth my freedom. He is not worth the rest of my days."

I looked at Mark in surprise. I thought he was going to end it all with violence. I thought the Thorne men only knew how to destroy things. But Mark was standing in the rain, choosing to be better than his brother.

"I called the police," Mark continued. "I told them there was a man trapped in the basement of the lake house. I told them he was a suspect in a fatal hit and run accident. They are on their way now. They will find him exactly where you left him. Locked in the dark with his own lies."

I felt a wave of relief wash over me. Justine would be arrested. He would be processed. He would have to face the law. That was a much better ending than a quick death in the woods.

"What about Jade?" I asked.

Mark’s face hardened at the mention of his wife. "She is gone. She took a bag and left the house while I was out. She thinks she can run. But I have already frozen our joint accounts. She has no money. She has no friends left. I have already filed for divorce. I will make sure she has nothing but the clothes on her back."

We stood there in the silence of the rain for a long time. The water was soaking through Mark’s shirt, but he did not seem to care. He looked at me with a strange kind of respect. We were two people who had been burned by the same fire. We were the only ones who truly understood the depth of the pain.

"This is just the start, Amber," Mark said. "You know how our mother is. Evelyn will not let Justine stay in jail. She will hire the best lawyers. She will buy the judges. She will try to make you look like a liar. She will try to say the video was fake. She will use the Thorne name to crush you."

I looked at my phone. The screen was still glowing with the comments from the live stream. "She can try," I said. "But the world saw him admit it. The world saw his face when I told him the camera was on. She cannot buy everyone, Mark. Not this time."

Mark shook his head. "You do not know her like I do. She would rather burn this whole city down than let the Thorne name be ruined. She has secrets that go back forty years. If you want to win this war, you cannot just have the truth. You need power. You need to take the company from her. You need to hit her where it hurts the most. Her wallet."

I looked at the tall buildings of the city in the distance. I thought about the office where Evelyn sat like a queen. I thought about the many times she told me I was not good enough to be part of her family. She thought I was a small girl from a small town. She thought I was someone she could use and then throw away.

"I want everything," I said. I was surprised by how cold my own voice sounded. "I want the house. I want the company. I want her to wake up one day and realize she has to ask me for permission to breathe."

Mark smiled for the first time. It was a small and dark smile. "Then we have a deal. I know where the bodies are buried, Amber. I know the legal moves she makes to hide her money. I have been her head of security for ten years. I have seen the papers she thinks she burned. I will give you everything you need to dismantle her empire piece by piece."

"Why help me?" I asked. "She is your mother. It is your family name too."

Mark reached out and touched the handle of my car door. "She stopped being my mother the night she helped Justine hide the truth about your baby. A mother protects life. She only protects her own pride. I want to see her fall just as much as you do."

I looked at him and I saw a partner. I saw the only person in the world I could trust. We were not friends. We were not lovers. We were two people who had made a blood oath in the rain. We were going to destroy the Thorne family from the inside out.

"Go to the police station now," Mark told me. "Give them your statement. Show them the physical papers you found. I will go to the office and start gathering the files on the offshore accounts. We need to move fast before Evelyn realizes we are working together."

I nodded. I felt a new kind of energy. The sadness was still there, but it was being pushed aside by a clear goal. I was no longer just a woman who had been cheated on. I was a hunter.

"Mark," I called out as he started to walk back to his SUV.

He stopped and turned around.

"Thank you," I said. "For not killing him. For giving me a chance to do this the right way."

Mark nodded once. "Just make sure you don't show him any mercy when the time comes, Amber. He doesn't deserve it."

I watched him get into his car and drive away. I put my car in gear and followed. As I drove toward the city lights, I felt the ghost of my baby in the backseat. I felt like the child I lost was finally resting. I was going to get justice. I was going to make them pay for every tear I cried and every drop of blood I lost.

The city was waiting for me. The Thorne family thought they were gods. They thought they could live above the law. But they did not realize that they had created their own greatest enemy. They had taken a woman who loved them and turned her into a woman who would destroy them.

I reached the police station and saw the blue and red lights flashing. I saw a group of reporters already waiting at the entrance. They saw my car and began to run toward me with their cameras. I did not hide my face. I did not wear sunglasses. I wanted them to see my eyes.

I stepped out of the car and the cameras flashed like lightning.

"Amber! Is it true?" they shouted. "Did Justine Thorne leave you to die?"

I stood tall in the rain. I looked directly into the nearest camera.

"My name is Amber Rivera," I said, leaving out the Thorne name for the first time in years. "And tonight, the truth is finally coming home."

I walked past the reporters and into the station. The hunt had officially begun. Behind me, I could hear the sirens of the police cars returning from the lake house. I knew Justine was in the back of one of those cars. He was cold. He was wet. He was terrified.

And I was just getting started.

As I sat down at the wooden desk to start my statement, I looked at the clock on the wall. It was after midnight. A new day had started. The day the Thorne empire would begin to crumble.

I picked up the pen and began to write. I wrote about the love. I wrote about the affair. I wrote about the crash. I wrote every detail until my hand hurt. I was building a cage out of words, and I was going to lock the whole family inside of it.

I looked out the window at the rain. Mark was out there somewhere, digging up the secrets of the company. We were a team now. A team born from betrayal.

I closed my eyes for a second and whispered to the air.

"I am coming for you, Evelyn. I am coming for all of you."

When I opened my eyes, the sadness was gone. There was only the fire. And the fire was going to burn until nothing was left but ash.