Chapter 6 - THE MAN WHO ORDERED THE CRASH
The SUV stopped inches from a concrete barrier.
For several seconds, I heard nothing except my own breathing.
Then Nathan shouted my name.
“Claire!”
He had been in the security vehicle behind us.
He reached my door before I understood we had stopped moving.
“Look at me.”
“My baby.”
“I know.”
“My baby.”
“Ambulance is coming.”
There was blood on my hand.
Nathan saw it.
His face went white.
Then we both realized it wasn't mine.
Our driver had cut his forehead.
I wasn't bleeding.
I started sobbing.
At the hospital, the heartbeat was still there.
One hundred sixty-two beats per minute.
Strong.
Alive.
I cried through the entire ultrasound.
Nathan stood beside the bed.
Grant arrived twenty minutes later.
He burst through the doorway looking like he had run the entire distance from downtown.
“Claire.”
I looked at him.
His eyes dropped toward the monitor.
Then he stopped.
Our baby moved.
A tiny flicker.
Grant covered his mouth.
For one brief, impossible second, we were the couple we had once been.
Two people staring at the child we thought we'd never have.
Then reality returned.
Nathan stood on my other side.
Grant saw him.
The moment passed.
Detective Maria Alvarez came in after the doctor cleared me.
“This wasn't road rage.”
I already knew.
“Traffic cameras show the other vehicle shadowing yours for eleven minutes.”
Grant’s face hardened.
“Who owns it?”
“Shell company.”
“Connected to?”
“We're working on it.”
Nathan spoke.
“I want Claire moved to private security housing.”
Grant looked at him.
“So do I.”
I stared at both men.
“Wonderful. My ex-husband and possible future husband agree I need a bunker.”
Nathan almost smiled.
Grant did not.
“Future husband?”
I closed my eyes.
Of course he had heard that part.
“Not now.”
Alvarez looked entertained despite herself.
Then she placed a printed photograph on the table.
The sedan had been found abandoned three miles away.
Inside was a prepaid phone.
One text remained.
DO NOT FAIL AGAIN.
Grant stared at it.
“Again?”
Detective Alvarez nodded.
“We're reviewing whether there have been other attempts to intimidate you.”
My mind went to the medical-record hack.
Then the leaked DNA report.
Then Conrad’s trust filing.
“Conrad.”
Grant stood.
“My father did this.”
“Grant,” I said.
“He's obsessed with the trust.”
“He's many things. I don't think he's stupid enough to order a car crash against the woman carrying his grandchild.”
Nathan looked at me.
“Someone might be.”
The answer came forty-eight hours later.
Not Conrad.
Not Eleanor.
Sloane.
Or at least, that's what the evidence initially suggested.
The prepaid phone contained deleted messages recovered by investigators.
One had been sent to a number registered to an assistant employed by Sloane Pierce.
Police searched her temporary residence.
They found fifty thousand dollars in cash.
Sloane was arrested.
The news became a circus.
PREGNANT MISTRESS ACCUSED OF TARGETING BILLIONAIRE’S EX-WIFE.
Grant visited me that evening.
I was staying at Nathan’s family estate outside Lake Forest.
“You were right,” Grant said.
“About what?”
“Everything.”
“That is a dangerously broad statement.”
He didn't smile.
“I let myself believe you were the reason our marriage hurt.”
I said nothing.
“Every miscarriage made me feel helpless. And instead of admitting I was helpless, I became angry.”
My chest tightened.
“At me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you were there.”
A terrible answer.
An honest one.
“I started working later because I hated coming home and seeing how much pain we were both in.”
“You could have talked to me.”
“I know.”
“You could have gone to therapy.”
“I know.”
“You could have left before sleeping with someone else.”
“I know.”
Tears filled his eyes.
“I don't have an excuse.”
For once, I didn't need one.
Grant looked toward my stomach.
“I loved you. I just wasn't brave enough to love you when loving you became painful.”
That hurt.
Because I understood it.
Not forgave.
Understood.
“And Nathan?” he asked.
“What about him?”
“Do you love him?”
I smiled sadly.
“He doesn't make me earn peace.”
Grant looked away.
That answer hurt him more than yes would have.
My phone rang.
Detective Alvarez.
“Sloane didn't order the crash.”
I stood.
Grant did too.
“What?”
“The assistant’s phone was spoofed. The cash was planted.”
“Then who?”
“We found something connected to the shell company that owned the sedan.”
She paused.
“Derek Lang.”
Grant’s face hardened.
But Alvarez wasn't finished.
“The payments don't originate with Derek.”
I stopped breathing.
“Who?”
“Whitmore Holdings.”
Grant stared.
“That doesn't make sense.”
“Specifically, a discretionary corporate security account controlled by the executive chairman.”
Conrad.
Grant whispered:
“My father.”
Police arrested Conrad Whitmore at his Gold Coast residence that night.
But when investigators questioned him, he denied ordering the crash.
Then he asked for Grant.
Only Grant.
My ex-husband returned three hours later looking shaken.
“What did he say?”
Grant sat across from me.
“He authorized payments to Derek.”
“For what?”
“To make the paternity scandal disappear.”
My skin went cold.
“What does that mean?”
“He claims he told Derek to buy silence. Sloane. Clinic employees. Anyone who might keep the story alive.”
“Did he order the crash?”
“No.”
“You believe him?”
Grant looked at me.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because when I told him you could have died, he threw up.”
I stared.
Not proof.
But something.
Grant continued.
“Derek had access to the security account.”
Nathan entered the room.
“He also had motive.”
We looked at him.
Nathan placed a folder on the table.
“Derek owns four percent of Whitmore Holdings through trusts and options. If the family voting block fractures next year, a private equity consortium is positioned to launch a takeover.”
Grant’s face changed.
“Whose consortium?”
Nathan looked at him.
“Derek’s.”
Everything clicked.
The fake heirs.
The succession fraud.
The leaks.
Derek hadn't simply slept with Sloane.
He had helped create the exact crisis that could break Whitmore control.
Sloane thought she was becoming Mrs. Grant Whitmore.
Conrad thought he was preserving a dynasty.
Eleanor thought she was securing grandchildren.
But Derek had been using all of them.
And now my unborn child threatened to fix the succession problem he had spent years creating.
Grant stood.
“He tried to kill Claire.”
Nathan corrected him.
“He tried to remove the heir.”
I hated the word.
But this time, it explained everything.
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
It showed me leaving the hospital two hours earlier.
Underneath:
Tell Grant to renounce the child permanently.
Next time, the driver won't miss.
Grant read it over my shoulder.
His face went cold.
Nathan reached for his phone.
I stopped both men.
“No.”
They looked at me.
“I am done hiding.”
“Claire—” Grant began.
“No.”
I stood.
“For eight years, your family decided what I could survive.”
I looked at Nathan.
“Then everybody decided I needed to be protected from knowing things.”
Back to Grant.
“I am not disappearing again.”
“What are you saying?”
I placed the threatening message on the table.
“Derek wants me afraid.”
May you like
My hands stopped shaking.
“So let's make him think I am.”
