Chapter 2The Wrong Road to a Perfect Revenge

The ambulance roared onto the East mountain pass.

The text on my windshield flared:

[Holy crap! She changed direction!]

[Wait, can she see us? Is she reading the chat?]

[Go, Nora! Toby’s losing air! Move!]

My knuckles were white on the wheel. The headset crackled again, Mark’s voice sounding more desperate, more manic. "Nora? Are you on the West Road yet?"

"I’m moving," I managed to choke out.

"West, right? You’re sure? Toby’s vitals... his watch says his heart rate is dropping. There’s no room for error, Nora!"

I faltered. I’d known Mark for ten years. We’d built a life. A home. "Mark... I..."

"Nora! Toby doesn’t have time! If you’re on the wrong road, turn around now! There’s still a window! If you’re late, he’s dead! DO YOU HEAR ME?"

Mark was a corporate lawyer; he never lost his cool. But now, his voice was thick with tears. "Please, honey... save him. He’s our only son."

Doubt, cold and sharp, pierced my chest. Toby was our miracle baby. Mark was obsessed with his well-being—he personally vetted the organic milk, hired the best nutritionists, and had already set up a massive trust fund for Toby’s eighteenth birthday.

How could I trust these hallucinations over the man I’d loved for a decade?

I started to slow down, my foot hovering over the brake to U-turn.

[DON’T YOU DARE TURN AROUND!]

[Nora, you’re losing him! He’s doing this on purpose!]

[He’ll do anything for his high school sweetheart’s kid. Even sacrifice his own blood.]

[She doesn’t know they were born on the same day. Mark has been funding the other kid’s life for years.]

[The ‘organic milk’ and ‘nutritionist’? He was sending the best stuff to the mistress and bringing the leftovers home to Toby.]

I slammed on the brakes. The ambulance screeched to a halt, smoke curling from the tires.

Mark was funding the other kid?

The text blurred in a frenzy:

[She still doesn’t know Mark wasn’t ‘stuck at a deposition’ the night Toby was born. He was at the hospital across town, holding Sloane’s hand while she delivered.]

[Sloane dumped him years ago, but the second she came crawling back as a widow, he folded like a cheap suit.]

My world tilted.

"Nora? Why did you stop? Are you there?" Mark’s voice was trembling.

If that tremble wasn't for our son... if it was for someone else's... then what had my life been?

But what if the text was a lie? A stroke? A psychotic break?

The two voices—the man in my ear and the ghosts on my windshield—were tearing me apart. I closed my eyes, took one shuddering breath, and floored the accelerator.

I stayed on the East Road.