Chapter 10
Victoria had never driven the Suburban.
She had done something more important.
She deleted the record showing who had.
Rachel confronted her with the server log.
Victoria’s attorney requested a break.
Twenty minutes later, Victoria returned without makeup beneath her eyes.
“I knew about the accident.”
Dante stared at her.
“How much?”
“Preston called me afterward.”
Her voice shook.
“He said he’d scared Elena enough that she would leave.”
“You believed that?”
“At first.”
“What changed?”
“He told me to delete the GPS file.”
There it was.
The first major truth she had actively concealed.
Dante leaned forward.
“Who was driving?”
Victoria looked toward her attorney.
Then back at Dante.
“Preston.”
The room seemed smaller.
She explained.
Preston had borrowed the Suburban because he did not want Elena recognizing his personal SUV.
He followed her after a prenatal appointment.
He intended to frighten her.
That was his version.
“He said he got too close.”
Elena’s car struck the guardrail.
Preston returned the Suburban and ordered repairs.
Victoria deleted the GPS record because Preston told her the family would collapse if Dante discovered everything before the wedding.
Dante’s voice remained low.
“Why protect him?”
Victoria began crying.
“Because I thought the wedding fixed the problem.”
“What problem?”
She looked at him.
That was the twist Dante had not seen.
Victoria had not agreed to hide the pregnancy only because she feared losing Dante.
Months earlier, she had invested almost all of her own trust money into Preston’s failing development deal.
If Preston collapsed financially, Victoria lost most of her fortune too.
The wedding would merge her planned investment with Dante’s hotel project and refinance Preston’s debt.
Elena’s pregnancy threatened an audit.
The audit threatened Preston.
And Preston’s collapse threatened Victoria.
Three clues changed meaning at once.
Her anonymous payment of Elena’s prenatal bills had not been compassion alone. She was buying time.
Her insistence that Elena disappear until after the wedding had protected the financing.
Her terror when Dante removed the engagement ring had not only been heartbreak.
She had just watched the financial structure keeping both Sloans afloat disappear from her finger.
Victoria had known Preston caused Elena’s crash.
She had not wanted Elena dead.
But she had helped erase evidence after Elena nearly died.
Dante sat back.
Victoria whispered, “I kept telling myself nobody was really hurt.”
Elena, seated beside her own attorney, looked at her.
“I was six months pregnant when your brother tried to drag me through a service door.”
Victoria looked down.
Dante finally understood the betrayal.
Victoria had loved him.
May you like
That was probably true.
She had simply loved security, her brother, and the life she was about to lose enough to let Elena and his unborn son pay the price.
