Chapter 8 - THE CRASH
Dad survived.
Broken wrist.
Three cracked ribs.
A cut over his eyebrow.
I arrived at the hospital shaking so badly I dropped my phone twice.
He looked at me.
“You look terrible.”
I started crying.
He smiled.
“Ah.”
“Now I’m in trouble.”
I wanted to hit him.
Instead I held his hand.
Police said the other vehicle fled.
Security footage showed a black SUV.
Stolen plates.
No proof of Celeste.
Then Dad’s driver woke.
He remembered the SUV pacing them for three exits.
Not an accident.
Celeste denied everything.
Victor called it coincidence.
Adrian came to the hospital.
I almost told him to leave.
Then he handed police his phone.
Celeste had texted him thirty minutes before the crash.
SOME PEOPLE ONLY LEARN WHEN SOMETHING THEY LOVE GETS HURT.
That was not proof.
But it was ugly.
Police searched her devices.
Nothing.
Too clean.
Then Maria called me.
The caterer.
She had seen Celeste give cash to a man at Blackthorn.
A security contractor named Ross Dane.
Ross had left the estate the morning after the party.
Police found him in a motel.
He denied the crash.
Then they found a dashcam memory card in his bag.
Deleted.
Recoverable.
Video showed him following Dad’s car.
His attorney immediately asked for a deal.
Celeste had hired him.
Not to kill Dad.
According to Ross.
“To scare him.”
Dad listened from his hospital bed.
“By hitting a car at seventy miles an hour?”
Ross looked down.
Celeste was arrested for conspiracy and reckless endangerment.
The cameras caught her outside the courthouse.
No gold dress.
No smile.
I thought I would feel satisfied.
Then Victor posted her bail.
Two million dollars.
Dad watched the news.
“He still thinks protecting her is love.”
I sat beside him.
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
He looked at his cast.
“Sometimes love is the person who finally refuses to help you escape yourself.”
The next morning, Celeste disappeared.
Her ankle monitor had been cut.
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And Blackthorn Estate’s housekeeper was missing too.
