جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 80

CHAPTER SEVENTYDom made it through the surgery with flying colors and was showing signs of improvement. His brain was swelling less and his body was healing.Leo came into the room holding a tablet, his expression unreadable. He gestured for Cassie to follow him into the hallway."I have information," he said quietly. "About the accident."Cassie's heart rate picked up. "And?""The vehicle that hit you was a black SUV, registered to a shell company out of New Jersey but from the look of things, the company doesn't exactly exist. It's just a front. The investigator traced the financial transactions and found a burner phone was used to hire a driver for exactly twenty-four hours on the day of the accident.""Hire him to do what?" Cassie asked, though she already knew the answer."Hit your car. The investigator enhanced the highway footage and the impact trajectory shows it was aimed specifically at the passengers side. What made it look like a hit and run was the fact that after the hi

CHAPTER SEVENTY TWOPhysical therapy finally started. The therapist's name was David and he was professional and methodical and had no patience for Dom's attempts to push past what his body could do."You're going to damage the healing nerves," David said firmly when Dom tried to move his leg through a full range of motion during their first session. "We take this slow and steady. That's how recovery works.""I don't have time to take anything slow," Dom said. His jaw was tight, his hands gripping the bed rails."You have whatever time your body needs," David replied. "We're looking at four months minimum for you to walk without assistance. That's being conservative. You might need longer."Dom's expression didn't change, but Cassie felt something shift in the air around him."I'll do it in two months," he said quietly."That's not realistic…”"Two months," Dom repeated, cutting him off. "I'll push harder. I'll do the work but I'm not spending four months in this hospital."David loo

CHAPTER SEVENTY FOURDom had gone through physical therapy that morning and had pushed himself to the point of vomiting. David had stopped the session early, worried about him, but Dom had just wiped his mouth and insisted he could keep going."You're hurting yourself," David said firmly. "We're done for today.""We're not done until I say we're done," Dom replied.But the therapist was professional and experienced with difficult patients, and he packed up his equipment and left anyway. After that, Dom refused to get back into bed. He'd insisted on sitting in the chair by the window, even though his leg was throbbing and he was pale with pain. He'd been awake for thirty-six hours straight, refusing to sleep, convinced that sleep was wasted time.Cassie had watched him deteriorate all day. He had become more and more withdrawn and more and more aggressive when anyone tried to talk to him. Slowly, he was being consumed by whatever darkness was living inside his head.Around eight o'cloc

CHAPTER SEVENTY SIXThe name on the screen was four words.Cassie read them once. Then she read them again because the first time didn't produce understanding, just the shape of letters arranged in an order that her brain refused to process. Leo was standing beside her in the corridor outside Dom's room, his phone tilted toward her, and she was aware of the sound of the hospital around them, a trolley somewhere, a nurse's shoes on the floor, a machine beeping two doors down, all of it continuing as though the world hadn't just shifted underneath her feet.She handed the phone back and Leo took it without a word and slid it into his pocket. Neither of them moved. Cassie folded her arms tightly across herself, not because she was cold but because suddenly she didn't know what else to do with her hands. It felt impossible that something so life altering could arrive on the screen of a phone no bigger than her palm.Just four ordinary words but it was enough to rearrange everything she th

CHAPTER SEVENTY EIGHTShe went to the station alone. She hadn't told Leo and she hadn't told Dom either. She had spent the forty minute drive talking herself in and out of turning around no fewer than four times before she pulled into the car park and sat with her hands on the wheel and decided that she was done being the person things happened to.Officer Chen was at his desk when they brought her through. He looked up when she walked in and she could tell from the way he straightened that he recognized her immediately, the face from the highway, from the follow-up call, from the case file that was presumably open somewhere on his computer right now."Mrs. Hale," he said. "I wasn't expecting you.""I have something you need to see," she said. "And I think you have something I need to hear. So I thought we should probably just be in the same room."He gestured to the chair across from his desk and she sat down and pulled out her phone and opened the photographs she had taken of Leo's