"I never expected..." Tyler's tears fell. "I never expected to see you behind the wheel, running someone down."
A jewelry store.
There really was a jewelry store I liked on that road.
Could it really be that much of a coincidence?
"Contact the owner of that store. Verify whether Tyler actually ordered a custom piece for me."
Tyler reached out to the store owner himself. When the owner confirmed it, my legs went weak.
It was airtight. They must have planned everything well in advance, leaving me no chance to fight back.
"Vivian, I thought you were just venting when you said those things. I never imagined you'd actually kill my mother. This wasn't a traffic accident. This was premeditated murder."
Susannah kept calling me "Vivian" in that familiar tone, but every word out of her mouth cut deeper than the last.
The officers turned to look at her immediately.
My expression shifted. In my previous life, I'd been convicted of vehicular manslaughter. But now Susannah was clearly trying to escalate the charges.
"What did you just say?" I glared at her. "Don't you dare make baseless accusations."
"See for yourself." Susannah handed me her phone.
On the screen were chat screenshots between her and me.
"If you dare get that close to Tyler again, I'll make you pay dearly."
Susannah looked at me. "I'm Tyler's assistant. There's nothing between us. I know he's a wonderful man and you love him, but just because I work alongside him, you killed my mother? Don't you think that's a little extreme?"
I immediately scrolled through my own phone, searching. There was no such conversation anywhere in my messages.
"Of course you'd delete something like that," Susannah said. "Have a technician recover the chat history and the truth will come out."
I was certain I'd never sent those messages. Checking my phone would prove the truth.
The officers contacted a forensic technician. Fifteen minutes later, when the recovered chat history appeared on my screen, the blood drained from my face.
And the officers found something else in my phone's browser. They recovered a trove of deleted search history.
How to commit the perfect crime. Searches like that dragged me straight into the abyss.
"Vivian, how could you do this?" Tyler crouched on the ground in agony, pounding his fists against the floor.
"I didn't do it. I absolutely did not kill anyone. I didn't even leave the house today."
"Then where's the car? Where's the vehicle that hit her? If I drove into someone today, there would be evidence on it."
"After the incident, did anyone touch that car? It has a seat memory function. If I wasn't the one driving, there will be clues."
"Vivian, even now, you still won't admit it?" Tyler looked at me, his eyes brimming with disappointment. "Go look in a mirror first. Look at the wound on your forehead."
"The airbag deployed and shattered your sunglasses, leaving that cut on your forehead. Those sunglasses were found at the scene. Along with blood."
"The police have already collected blood samples for analysis. Refusing to confess will only make your sentence worse."
He was lying through his teeth. I rushed to find a mirror.
The moment I saw my reflection, the room tilted around me.
I really was injured.
How was that possible?
I'd been home the entire time. How could I have been hurt?
Tyler watched me. "Vivian, confess now, before the lab results come back."
No. None of this was right.
This time, I would not give in.
"I'll wait for the results."
I needed to stall. I needed more time to comb through the details, to find the cracks in their story.
But fate didn't seem willing to give me that time.
The words had barely left my mouth when an officer's phone rang. The lab results were in.
The officer looked at me. "The blood comparison is a match. The blood found in the vehicle involved in the accident is yours."
"Wait!"
"I've got it. I've figured it out."
I stared at Susannah. "I know the truth now. So what's it going to be, Susannah? Are you going to tell them yourself, or do I have to say it?"
