My Ex Abandoned Me After My Brother Died—Then on Christmas Eve He Whispered, “His Brakes Were Sabotaged!”

The red Ferrari was parked outside the jewelry store like a warning, and the man leaning against it had the nerve to smile when Nora Vale pulled up beside him.

She kept both hands on the wheel of her black Range Rover. Her cobalt-blue coat was buttoned to the throat. Her black gloves hid the tremor in her fingers.

Adrian Cross lifted one hand in greeting.

“Fourteen months,” he said when she lowered the window. “And you come back on Christmas Eve.”

“I didn’t come back for you.”

“I know. You came back for the company.” His smile vanished. “Which means you’re in more danger than you think.”

Nora glanced at the red Ferrari. Adrian had once driven it to her brother Ethan’s garage every Friday night, bringing takeout and terrible jokes. After Ethan died, Adrian had stopped answering her calls, then announced their engagement was over through a lawyer.

“Move your car,” she said.

“Not until you listen.”

“I listened to you lie for fourteen months.”

He flinched, and for one second the polished attorney disappeared. The man beneath him looked exhausted.

“Ethan didn’t die because the brakes failed,” he said. “They were made to fail.”

A horn blared behind Nora. In her rearview mirror, a black sedan had stopped too close to her bumper. Its headlights went dark.

Adrian saw it, too.

“Drive,” he said.

“Tell me who did it.”

“I will. But not here.” He opened the passenger door of the Range Rover without asking. “There’s a car behind you that’s been following you since the highway.”

Nora’s stomach tightened.

She reached under the steering column and pressed the hidden panic switch her brother had installed years ago. Then she looked at Adrian.

“If you get in, you answer every question.”

The black sedan’s engine roared.

Nora hit the accelerator, and as the Range Rover shot into traffic, Adrian gripped the dashboard and said, “The person who killed Ethan knows you have the key.”