Chapter 4 - My Best Friend Came to Warn Me—But the Photograph in Her Pocket Changed Everything
Meera stood beneath the security lights, soaked through.
I ran toward the gate.
Cedric's voice followed me.
"Anna. Wait."
I didn't.
The guard opened the pedestrian entrance. Meera grabbed my arms so tightly her nails caught my coat.
"You have to leave," she whispered.
"Why?"
She looked beyond me.
Cedric had stopped several feet away. His chair remained on the wet stone, and rain collected along his shoulders.
"Show her," he said.
Meera pulled a photograph from her jacket. My mother stood beside a delivery van. A small boy leaned against her knee.
My brother.
I knew his crooked smile.
The date printed in the corner was impossible.
It was taken four years after their funeral.
My knees weakened.
"Where did you get this?"
"Someone left it at my apartment. They knew your address. They knew mine."
Cedric reached for the photograph, then stopped himself.
"May I?"
I gave it to him.
He studied the van, not the faces.
"This plate belongs to a company my uncle owned," he said.
"Your uncle?"
"Vittorio Spedaro."
The name scraped across my memory. I'd heard it in the garage, spoken like a threat.
Meera stepped closer.
"Anna, there's writing on the back."
I turned the picture over.
A single sentence had been pressed into the paper.
ASK HIM WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BRIDGE.
Cedric's fingers tightened around his chair's rim.
"I was there," he said.
The rain seemed to stop making noise.
"At the bridge?"
He nodded once.
"The night your family disappeared."
I stared at him.
"You told me they died."
"I told you what the official report said."
"Then tell me what you know."
He looked toward the mansion.
"Not here. Vittorio has eyes outside these gates."
A car engine started beyond the trees.
Meera went pale.
"That black sedan," she whispered. "It followed me all the way here."
May you like
Its headlights swung toward us.
Then someone inside raised a camera.
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