“No press.”
“Freeze discretionary accounts.”
“Legal review before dawn.”
“Get me the hotel timestamp.”
“Find Melissa’s full name.”
“Protect Claire first.”
Protect Claire.
No one could.
Not from this.
At 5:03 a.m., the rain stopped.
A gray, bruised dawn pressed against the hospital windows.
I had not slept. My father had not sat down. Garrett had not been allowed back upstairs.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I stared at it until it stopped.
A voicemail appeared.
Then a message.
Unknown:
You don’t know the whole story. Garrett wasn’t the only one lying tonight.
My spine went cold.
A photo loaded beneath the text.
At first, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
It was a hotel room.
The Grand Meridian.
A woman slept in a white sheet, blonde hair spilling across the pillow.
Melissa.
Beside her on the nightstand lay Garrett’s wedding ring.
And next to it, half-hidden beneath a glass of champagne, was an orange prescription bottle.
