My sister was struck down on her way home from school, sent flying by my husband's young assistant, who'd been driving drunk.
The doctors couldn't save her. They pronounced her dead.
I filed suit that same day and dragged the woman into court.
But on the day of the trial, my parents were tied up inside an abandoned factory, strapped head to toe with explosives.
Brent Stephens's younger sister Stephens looked down at me, his voice glacial.
"If you don't drop the charges, I can't promise these bombs won't go off all on their own. Your sister is already dead. Why insist on destroying another girl's life?"
"If your sister hadn't darted into the road, Tabitha never would have panicked and hit the gas instead of the brake. When it comes down to it, your sister got herself killed!"
So that was it. Brent thought the dead girl was my sister.
That was why he'd stoop to threatening me with my parents' lives to make me drop the case!
I let out a cold laugh.
"Dropping the charges requires a signature from the victim's family. I'm not qualified to give it."
——
Brent was famous for his obsession with his little sister.
If she so much as scraped a knee, he could turn all of Crestport City upside down.
Later, terrified some no-account boy would lure her away, he'd shipped her off to an elite all-girls private school in high school. Tuition ran more than ten million a year.
When I refused to sign, his face went dark in an instant.
"Bella Pruitt, I'm informing you. I'm not negotiating with you."
"Tabitha just graduated college. Will you only be satisfied once you've ruined the rest of her life?"
"Your sister was going to marry off into someone else's family anyway. Fine, I'll throw a little more compensation your family's way. Call it something for your parents."
Then he glanced toward the two elderly figures bound to the chairs, a flicker of menace at the bottom of his eyes.
"You'd better decide quickly. Otherwise I can't promise when these explosives might go off!"
I looked at the certainty written all over Brent's face, and felt a chill go straight through me.
To clear Tabitha's name, he would actually threaten me with my parents' lives.
I stared at the bomb counting down, and it was as if a knife were twisting in my chest.
"Brent, are you even human? The one who got run down and killed was our sister!"
His eyes darkened, and he corrected me, his voice cold.
"The one who got killed was your sister, not mine!"
I looked at him and laughed coldly.
I'd only said our sister, and already he was scrambling to wash his hands of her.
If he knew the dead girl was his own sister, would he still be forcing me to sign that family release?
Brent's parents had died the year he turned eighteen. Back then his uncle, fighting for the inheritance, kidnapped the two siblings.
To let Brent escape, his sister stayed behind alone to hold off the kidnappers, and was tortured for three days and three nights in their den.
By the time she was found, she was barely clinging to life.
From that day on, Brent had sworn he would protect his sister, that he would never let her come to the slightest harm.
Thinking of everything Brent's sister had once suffered, I couldn't help but sigh.
"Brent, do you have any idea? Your sister still had breath in her when she was hit. Tabitha was afraid the treatment and recovery afterward would come back on her, so she reversed and ran the girl over again, crushed her to death while she was still alive."
Brent remained unmoved. He only tossed a family release down in front of me, his eyes cold.
"That was nothing but a last flicker before the end. And besides, your sister clinging to life by a thread would have been its own kind of torture. Better she found release and earned your parents a little compensation. That's the practical thing."
I looked at the contempt at the bottom of his eyes, and my heart sank to rock bottom.
"Brent, my sister was killed by Tabitha that day because she'd gone to buy you a birthday cake. Did you know that?"
