The memory flashed.
A crash on a rain-slick road. Three days in the hospital. Victoria visiting often afterward.
Olivia swallowed painfully.
“She said the accident was my fault because you had been driving to see me. She said if I loved you, I would leave before I ruined your life completely.”
Ethan felt the room spin.
“I looked for you.”
“No.” Olivia’s voice cracked. “You looked where she let you look.”
Outside, sirens grew louder.
Olivia’s eyes sharpened with urgency.
“She paid me to stay gone. At first I refused. Then men came to my apartment. They took my phone. They said if I contacted you, they would take my baby after she was born.”
Lucy made a small wounded sound.
Ethan’s entire body went cold.
“Why keep the checks?”
“Proof. In case Lucy ever needed the truth.”
Her breathing became rough.
Ethan turned toward the doorway.
“Daniel!”
Daniel appeared, pale from what he had overheard.
“Ambulance is pulling in.”
Olivia grabbed Ethan’s sleeve with sudden strength.
“There’s more.”
“Tell me later.”
“No.” Her eyes were wild. “There may not be later.”
He bent close.
Olivia whispered, “Victoria didn’t just want you. She wanted Pierce Holdings. Your father’s trust. The marriage clause.”
Ethan stared at her.
His father’s trust had been private. Complicated. Almost forgotten.
Olivia coughed, and blood spotted the tissue in Lucy’s hand.
“Mom!”
Ethan looked toward the window.
A shadow moved outside.
Then glass shattered.
A brick crashed through the motel window and landed on the floor at Ethan’s feet.
Wrapped around it was a note.
Daniel shouted.
Lucy screamed.
Ethan grabbed her and pulled her away from the broken glass.
The note was sealed in plastic.
Ethan tore it open.
Five words.
SHE SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD.
Olivia closed her eyes.
“I told you,” she whispered.
The paramedics burst into the room seconds later, but Ethan barely heard them.
He was staring at the note.
At the broken window.
At the woman on the bed.
At the child shaking in his arms.
And in that moment, grief became something sharper.