Adrian
I couldn't stop thinking about it.
The cat.
At first it had felt like a small detail in the middle of something enormous — a blur in the chaos before everything went wrong.
But now it kept coming back.
Over and over.
Lucian crouching by the car.
Reaching underneath.
Calling to it.
And then the crash.
Breakfast sat untouched in front of me.
Evelyn had made something warm — eggs, toast, fruit arranged carefully on a plate — but the smell of food didn't matter.
Marcus noticed.
"You should eat," he said calmly.
"I'm not hungry."
"You need strength."
"For what?"
He didn't answer that.
Instead, he sipped his coffee and watched me in that quiet, measuring way he seemed to have.
Finally, I spoke again.
"There really was a cat."
Marcus raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Yes?"
"I saw it."
"I believe you."
"That means Lucian wasn't trying to mess with the car."
Marcus didn't respond right away.
He set his cup down.
"Adrian," he said carefully, "sometimes people interpret events differently when emotions are involved."
"That's not what happened."
I felt my voice getting tighter.
"He was trying to save it."
Marcus studied me for a long moment.
"You care about your brother."
"He's my twin."
That wasn't something you could just… separate.
Even if people tried.
Marcus leaned back slightly in his chair.
"I understand why you want to believe that."
My head snapped up.
"Want to believe?"
"Grief can shape memory."
"No," I said firmly. "That's not what this is."
I remembered Lucian's voice calling to the animal.
The way he had looked under the car.
He hadn't been acting guilty.
He had been worried.
And then something clicked in my mind.
Something small.
Something I hadn't questioned before.
"Why was the cat there?"
Marcus didn't react outwardly, but I noticed the slight pause before he answered.
"Animals wander."
"Not onto the middle of a driveway like that."
"It happens."
But something about his tone felt… dismissive.
Like he wanted the topic to end.
Which only made my thoughts spin faster.
The driveway had been clear earlier that day.
I remembered because Lucian and I had been racing bikes across it.
There hadn't been any animals then.
So where did it come from?
I pushed my chair back slightly.
"Did anyone check the car?"
Marcus looked at me.
"The authorities are handling the investigation."
"That's not what I asked."
Another pause.
"Yes," he said eventually. "They will examine it."
Will.
Not have.
Something about that word stuck with me.
Because if the brakes had failed…
Someone should already know why.
The room fell quiet again.
But my mind wasn't quiet anymore.
It was racing.
Trying to connect pieces that didn't make sense yet.
Across the table, Marcus watched me carefully.
Like he was studying something fragile.
Or something that might become dangerous if it grew too much.
Evelyn returned to the room then, placing a glass of juice near me.
"You should eat a little," she said gently.
I nodded faintly, though my attention was somewhere else entirely.
Because a thought had started forming.
A strange one.
A frightening one.
What if Lucian hadn't been the one near the car at the wrong time?
What if someone else had been?
And what if the cat…
hadn't been there by accident?
Far away from that quiet dining room, in another guarded place, someone was reviewing security footage from the Voss estate driveway the night before.
The image paused on a frame just minutes before the twins had stepped outside.
A shadow moved near the car.
Quick.
Deliberate.
And then—
A small animal was placed beneath the vehicle.