Chapter 2
The first thing I found was the insurance policy.
Seven million dollars.
Taken out three days before the crash.
On the lives of Ava and Ethan.
My hands shook so hard I nearly dropped the burner phone I’d hidden in the back of my underwear drawer. Seven million. Enough to pay off all of Ryan’s gambling debts. Enough to buy that penthouse downtown Brooke had been posting about on Instagram. Enough to start a whole new life without the boring wife and the crying kids he’d complained about for years.
I scrolled deeper.
The policy had two beneficiaries.
Ryan.
And Brooke.
Fifty-fifty.
I pressed a hand to my mouth to muffle the sob that tried to escape. They hadn’t just been having an affair. They’d been planning this. Planning my babies’ deaths. Calculating their worth down to the last dollar.
I thought of that rainy afternoon.
The kids had been so excited for their first soccer practice.
Ava in her pink shin guards.
Ethan wearing his jersey backward because he thought it looked cooler.
Ryan had volunteered to drive them.
Said I looked tired.
Said I should stay home and rest.
The police report said he’d lost control on the wet curve.
Said the car had hydroplaned.
Said it was a terrible, tragic accident.
Ryan had walked away with nothing but a scratch on his forehead.
The kids hadn’t made it to the hospital.
I’d believed him.
For three weeks, I’d blamed myself.
Wondered if I should have gone with them.
Wondered if I could have done something.
All while he’d been counting the days until the check cleared.
I kept digging.
Bank records.
Text messages.
Deleted emails Ryan thought were gone forever.
I found the text chain between him and Brooke, starting six months before.
She’s driving me crazy, Ryan had written. All she does is talk about the kids. I can’t wait until we’re finally free.
Brooke’s reply came ten minutes later. Just stick to the plan. Two more weeks and the policy goes through. Then we make the bad weather happen.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
They’d chosen the day.
Chosen the route.
Chosen the weather.
Ryan had checked the forecast every hour for three days before that storm.
Waited for the rain to be heavy enough.
Waited for the roads to be slick enough.
And then he’d driven my children straight into that curve.
On purpose.
I closed my eyes.
Saw Ava’s smile.
Heard Ethan’s laugh.
The sound they’d made when I’d tucked them in the night before, whispering that they loved me to the moon and back.
Ryan had kissed them goodbye that morning.
Hugged them.
Told them he loved them.
All while knowing he’d be killing them before dinner.
I opened the burner phone’s voice recorder app.
Pressed record.
Captured every screen.
Every text.
Every bank transfer.
Every damning line.
I would need more than digital files.
I knew how defense attorneys worked.
They’d say the phone was hacked.
Say the evidence was planted.
Say the grieving mother had lost her mind and fabricated it all.
I needed proof that couldn’t be denied.
Proof that would hold up in a court of law.
And if the courts failed?
Proof that would let me destroy them myself.
A floorboard creaked outside my bedroom door.
I froze.
Shoved the phone under the blankets.
Closed my eyes.
Let my mouth fall slack.
Practiced the empty, dead look Ryan expected to see.
The door creaked open.
Footsteps crossed the carpet.
Ryan stood over the bed for a long minute.
I could smell him.
Whiskey and Brooke’s expensive perfume.
He reached out.
Brushed hair off my face.
His touch burned.
I wanted to bite his hand.
Wanted to scream the truth into his face.
Instead, I let out a small, whimpering sound.
The sound of a broken woman having a nightmare.
He pulled his hand away like I’d burned him.
“Crazy bitch,” he muttered under his breath.
The door clicked shut.
I waited until I heard his bedroom door close down the hall.
Waited another ten minutes.
Then I pulled the phone back out.
There was more.
So much more.
Ryan had been embezzling from his own company for two years.
Eight million dollars siphoned through fake shell companies.
The SEC was closing in.
An audit had been scheduled for the week after the funeral.
If the insurance money didn’t come through in time, he’d go to prison for twenty years.
Brooke knew about that too.
She’d helped him set up the fake companies.
She was the one who’d suggested the insurance policy in the first place.
They were both going down.
Or they were going to get rich.
And my children had been the price of their freedom.
I made a list.
Every name.
Every account number.
Every date.
Every lie.
Then I opened a new document.
Typed three words at the top.
PLAN B.
The police would take too long.
They’d already bought off half the local force.
The mayor was Ryan’s golfing buddy.
The chief of police owed him a favor from ten years ago.
If I went to them now, the evidence would disappear.
I would disappear.
Another tragic suicide of a mother who couldn’t handle her grief.
No.
I would do this my way.
The forensic way.
Slow.
Methodical.
Undetectable.
I would dismantle Ryan’s life piece by piece.
Take everything he loved.
Everything he’d killed for.
And when he had nothing left?
When he was standing in the ruins of everything he’d built?
I would show him exactly who had destroyed him.
And I would make sure the last thing he ever saw was my face.
No longer the broken widow.
But the woman who had outsmarted him.
The woman who had avenged her children.
I saved the document.
Hid the phone.
Lay back in the darkness.
May you like
And for the first time since the funeral, I didn’t cry.
I smiled.
