Chapter 1
“Don’t try to open the door, Rosalind. It is far too late for you.”
Those were the last words I heard from my husband before he climbed out of the driver’s window and abandoned us in the middle of the dark river. Everything had unfolded in a matter of seconds while we were driving along the coastal highway toward Savannah Creek. My brother Tobias sat in the back, anchored to the wheelchair he had depended on ever since the terrible accident that took our parents fifteen years ago.
Suddenly, my husband lost control of the vehicle, or at least that was what I foolishly believed in that panicked moment. The heavy SUV plowed right through the guardrail and plunged straight into the deep water below. The brutal impact left me completely stunned, and by the time I regained consciousness, cold water was already rising past my ankles.
“Garrett! The door won’t open!” I screamed, hammering my fists against the glass.
He did not answer me at all as he unbuckled his seatbelt with chilling calm, rolled down his window, and slipped out into the current.
“Tobias is still behind us!” I shouted, choking on the rising water.
He did not even bother to turn around to look at me. I frantically tried to release my own seatbelt, but the heavy metal buckle was completely jammed. Slipping my trembling fingers beneath the leather cushion, I felt a sharp piece of metal and realized someone had tightly bound my belt to the steel frame with heavy wire.
That was the exact moment I realized this was never an accident.
As the freezing water reached my chest, I looked through the glass and spotted my husband swimming toward the shore. A woman was waiting for him under a large umbrella on the bank, and my stomach turned when I recognized my half-sister, Penelope, who was visibly pregnant. I watched him throw his arms around her as she gently stroked his face, both of them staring coldly at the submerged vehicle as it sank.
He actually smiled at her while I suffocated. We had been married for three whole years, three years of him swearing that I was the absolute love of his life. Every single night, he had lovingly prepared a warm glass of milk for me, claiming I was working far too hard managing our family’s historic shipyard in Baltimore.
“Okay, let’s move,” a steady voice called out from the back seat.
I turned around in tears, noticing the water was already lapping against my brother’s chin. “Forgive me, Tobias. I brought that monster straight into our family.”
I tightly closed my eyes and prepared for the end, but a sudden heavy thud echoed behind me, followed immediately by another. When I opened my eyes, Tobias was no longer sitting in his chair. He was standing upright inside the flooded cabin with both feet planted firmly on the floor.
He pulled a small cutting tool from inside his jacket and instantly sliced through the wire trapping my belt.
“Your legs?” I gasped, completely frozen in shock.
“I will explain everything later,” he said firmly, kicking the rear door open as the water pressure finally equalized.
Tobias grabbed my arm and dragged me out into the dark current. I tried to kick toward the surface, but he held me back with a firm grip.
“No, stay down,” he whispered, pressing a tiny emergency air nozzle from a waterproof pouch into my hand. “Garrett is watching from the shore, and if he realizes you survived, he will finish the job right now.”
We swam beneath an old ruined pier until we reached a hidden maintenance hatch wedged between massive concrete pillars. Once we finally scrambled inside and caught our breath, I shoved Tobias against the damp wall in utter disbelief.
“Fifteen years!” I screamed, tears streaming down my face. “Fifteen years of letting me believe you were completely paralyzed!”
Tobias did not even try to defend himself. “Because our parents’ crash wasn’t an accident either, Rosalind.”
“What are you talking about?” I whispered, feeling the floor collapse beneath me all over again.
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“Garrett’s father has been trying to seize control of our shipyard for fifteen years,” Tobias explained softly. “Garrett never married you out of love. He didn’t try to drown you today just for your company shares, he was finishing the job his father started years ago.”
That night, I realized my entire marriage was a horrific lie, but the absolute worst revelation was learning what he had been secretly feeding me every night.
