My brother Evan had spent most of his life cleaning up other people’s damage, which was probably why he became a defense attorney. The moment he saw the bruises on my face and the marks around my wrist in that hospital room, he stopped pretending Ryan was harmless.

When Detective Hale revealed that the car that hit me belonged to Patricia, Ryan panicked too quickly. Then the detective showed another traffic-camera photo proving Ryan himself had been driving the Lexus after the crash.

Ryan tried lying immediately, claiming it had been raining and that he never realized he hit me. But it had not rained that day, and I remembered the way he looked directly at me before impact.

As investigators dug deeper, the truth unraveled fast. Ryan had secretly forged mortgage paperwork and needed my signature to cover financial losses tied to Patricia’s failed investments. The text he sent before the accident was never about dinner — it was about forcing me to cooperate-