Chương 4
"It wasn't."
He placed a small evidence bag on the table.
The phone screen was cracked.
But intact.
"We recovered partial data."
"Partial?"
"Your passcode was required."
I looked at him.
"Adrian knows my passcode."
Ruiz nodded.
"That is why we did not give it to him."
A strange feeling moved through me.
Not relief.
Something closer to anger.
Because Adrian had spent years knowing everything about me.
My passwords.
My routines.
My fears.
My weaknesses.
He had mistaken intimacy for ownership.
"Can you access it?"
"Not without your permission."
I looked at the phone.
That small damaged rectangle represented the line between the life Adrian created for me and the truth he wanted buried.
"What is on it?"
Ruiz hesitated.
"Before the crash, someone attempted to delete information."
My chest tightened.
"But they failed?"
"Not completely."
He opened the folder beside him.
"There is something interesting."
"What?"
"A deleted audio file."
I stared at him.
"From when?"
"The night of the accident."
For the first time since waking up, I felt something close to fear.
Because I knew what that meant.
Someone had been listening.
Someone had been recording.
And someone had been desperate enough to erase the evidence.
The first thing I felt was not relief.
It was dread.
Because if the recording existed, then Adrian was not just hiding something.
He was reacting to something.
Ruiz noticed my expression.
"You have an idea what might be on it?"
I looked at the evidence bag.
"I saw a message on Adrian's phone before the crash."
"What message?"
I repeated the three words.
"It's done tonight."
Ruiz wrote them down.
"Did you see who sent it?"
"Vanessa."
He looked up.
"Vanessa Carter?"
I nodded.
"The legal director at your husband's company?"
"Yes."
Ruiz closed the folder.
"That changes things."
I almost smiled.
"Does it?"
He studied me.
"You want me to say yes."
"I want someone to tell me I am not imagining this."
His expression softened slightly.
"You are not."
The words should have comforted me.
Instead, they made the situation heavier.
Because believing myself meant accepting something I had spent days trying to avoid.
The man I loved had looked at me and decided I was an obstacle.
Ruiz arranged for the phone to be unlocked using my authorization.
My hands were useless.
The nurse helped position my finger against the sensor while Ruiz watched.
The phone opened.
For a few seconds, nobody spoke.
The screen displayed the same wallpaper I had used for almost two years.
A picture of Adrian and me at a charity event.
We were standing close.
Both smiling.
The kind of photo people used as proof that everything was good.
I hated looking at it.
Not because it was fake.
Because it was real when it was taken.
That was the cruel part.
Some moments in the past could be genuine even when the person beside you later became someone you no longer recognized.
Ruiz scrolled through the files.
"Most recent activity was around the time of the crash."
"Can you recover the audio?"
"Maybe."
He connected the phone to a secure device.
The room filled with small electronic sounds.
I watched the screen.
A progress bar appeared.
Twenty percent.
Forty.
Sixty.
Ruiz's phone rang.
He stepped away to answer.
I stared at the little bar moving across the screen.
It felt ridiculous that my entire future might depend on a damaged file.
Then again, lives were often changed by small things.
A sentence overheard.
A signature missed.
A message sent to the wrong person.
The nurse adjusting my blanket.
A doctor noticing something unusual.
Tiny moments carrying enormous weight.
Ruiz returned.
"That was the department."
I looked at him.
"Problem?"
"Your husband filed a complaint."
My stomach tightened.
"About what?"
"He says you are being pressured by people who want control of your assets."
I stared at him.
"He said that?"
"Yes."
The anger came so suddenly that my injured body reacted before my mind did.
My breathing changed.
My heart monitor sped up.
Ruiz noticed.
"Lena."
I forced myself to slow down.
Because that was what Adrian expected.
He expected me to look unstable.
Confused.
Emotional.
A woman whose accusations could be dismissed as trauma.
I looked at Ruiz.
"He's trying to make me look unreliable."
Ruiz nodded.
"Probably."
"Probably?"
"Because I cannot prove motive yet."
I closed my eyes.
That was the part nobody understood about power.
People thought power meant getting away with things.
Sometimes it simply meant making everyone else spend more energy proving what happened.
The progress bar stopped.
Ruiz looked back at the computer.
The recovered file appeared.
One audio recording.
Timestamped twenty minutes before the crash.
He clicked play.
At first, there was only static.
Then voices.
Adrian.
My entire body went still.
"I don't like how close she has become to Eleanor."
Vanessa answered.
"She doesn't know enough."
"She knows more than she should."
A wave of nausea moved through me.
Ruiz looked at me but did not stop the recording.
Vanessa's voice came next.
"Are you sure this is necessary?"
There was a pause.
A long one.
Then Adrian spoke.
"After tonight, everything becomes easier."
I covered my mouth.
The sound of my own breathing seemed too loud.
The recording continued.
Vanessa sounded nervous.
"What if she survives?"
"She won't."
The room disappeared for a moment.
I was back on that mountain road.
The sudden movement of the car.
The barrier.
The glass.
The feeling of falling.
Ruiz stopped the audio.
He did not need to let it continue.
The evidence had already changed everything.
But not enough.
Not yet.
He looked at me.
"I need to preserve this properly."
I nodded.
My eyes stayed on the phone.
"Did he know about the recorder?"
Ruiz frowned.
"What recorder?"
"The one Eleanor gave me."
He leaned forward.
"Tell me everything about that."
I did.
Then he asked something I did not expect.
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"Where did Eleanor get the information about the companies?"
"I don't know."
