Chapter 4 – THE BLOOD ON THE DASHBOARD

The world spun in a terrifying blur of shattered glass and crunching metal.

When the car finally slammed into a thick oak tree, the airbags deployed with a deafening pop. The smell of smoke and burning rubber filled the cabin.

“Anthony!” I screamed, tearing at my seatbelt.

“I’m okay,” my son coughed from the passenger seat. A thin cut across his forehead was bleeding, but he was conscious.

I looked in the rearview mirror. Dominic was slumped over, unconscious, blood pooling from a gash on his temple.

Outside, the doors of the black SUV opened. Heavy boots crunched on the gravel.

“Get the boy,” a cold voice ordered.

It was Vincent.

Panic seized my chest. “Anthony, out! Now!”

We kicked our doors open and scrambled into the dense, freezing woods. Branches tore at my evening gown. Mud ruined my shoes, but I didn’t stop. I grabbed Anthony’s hand and pulled him through the darkness.

“Mom, I dropped it!” Anthony panicked, pulling back.

“Dropped what?”

“The memory card! It fell on the dashboard when we crashed!”

I stopped dead. The only proof of Vincent’s crimes, the only leverage we had to destroy him, was sitting in the wrecked car.

“Keep running,” I whispered, pushing him behind a thick cluster of pine trees. “Hide. Don’t make a sound.”

I crept back toward the wreckage.

Vincent was standing by the open driver’s door of my Mercedes, inspecting the deployed airbag. Two of his armed guards were pulling Dominic’s unconscious body from the backseat.

Vincent reached into the car and picked something up off the dashboard.

The tiny micro-SD card.

He held it up to the moonlight, a cruel, satisfied smile crossing his face.

“Well, well,” Vincent murmured. “Rose always was a clever old bird.”

He dropped the memory card onto the asphalt and crushed it beneath the heel of his Italian leather shoe.

My heart shattered. The evidence was gone. My mother’s final effort to save us was dust.

“Sir,” one of the guards said, pointing a flashlight into the woods. “We found footprints. They went east.”

Vincent buttoned his suit jacket. “Find my son. If the wife gets in the way… handle her.”

I clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle a sob. Seventeen years of marriage. And he was ordering my execution like he was ordering a cup of coffee.

I turned to run back to Anthony, but a hand suddenly clamped down on my shoulder.

I almost screamed, but another hand covered my mouth.

I was dragged backward into the shadows of a large boulder.

I struggled wildly, fighting for my life, until a familiar scent of vanilla and expensive perfume hit my nose.

“Stop fighting me,” a woman whispered furiously.

I blinked in the darkness.

It was Celeste. Vincent’s mistress.

She was shivering, wearing a trench coat over her cocktail dress. In her trembling hands, she held a thick, leather-bound ledger.

“He thinks he destroyed the only copy,” Celeste whispered, looking terrified. “He doesn’t know I made backups.”

She shoved the ledger into my chest.

“Take it,” she choked out. “Take it and destroy him, Evelyn. Before he does to us what he did to your mother.”

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