One Night With My Fiancé Ruthless Uncle

Chapter Fifteen: The Voice In The Dark

The words hung in the air long after the recording ended.

Do not trust the man standing beside you.

Jennifer stared at Carter, her mother's warning still ringing in her ears, and for the first time since she had known him, she saw something close to panic in his eyes.

"That's not," he started, then stopped himself. "Jennifer, that's not what it sounds like."

"How would you know what it sounds like?" Her voice came out hoarse, barely more than a whisper. "You don't even know what she meant."

"I know I never hurt her."

"You also never told me you were there the night she died."

Carter flinched like she'd struck him.

Behind them, Gerald's laughter echoed low and ugly through the church. "There it is," he said. "The truth finally catching up to him."

Jennifer rounded on him, fury cutting through the fog of grief clouding her thoughts. "Don't act like you're innocent in this. You knew my mother. You lied about it all night."

"I lied about knowing her personally," Gerald said. "I never lied about what happened to her."

"You don't know what happened to her," Carter snapped. "None of us do. Not really. Not yet."

Another shot rang out, closer this time, splintering wood somewhere near the entrance. Jennifer flinched, and Carter's arm came around her instinctively, pulling her deeper behind the pillar.

"We need to move," he said. "Now."

"The box—"

"Is gone," Carter said. "Whoever's shooting already has it. We can't do anything for it standing here waiting to get killed."

Rosa was still crouched near the altar, her hands shaking as she pressed them against her ears. Jennifer reached for her, hauling her upright by the arm.

"Rosa. We have to go."

Rosa's eyes were wide, terrified, darting toward the shattered window where the shots had come from. "They'll kill us," she whispered. "Just like they killed her."

"Not if we move now," Carter said, already guiding them toward a side door tucked behind the altar, one Jennifer hadn't noticed until he pushed it open. "This way. There's an alley behind the church."

Gerald hesitated near the center of the nave, glancing toward his men, then toward the door Carter had found. For a moment, something flickered across his face, uncertainty, maybe even fear, before he turned and bolted after them without a word.

The alley was narrow, slick with rain, lit only by a single flickering streetlamp at its far end. Carter moved fast, pulling Jennifer along with a grip that left no room for argument, Rosa stumbling close behind, Gerald bringing up the rear with a nervous glance thrown back over his shoulder every few seconds.

They didn't stop running until they reached Carter's car, parked two streets away exactly where he'd left it. Jennifer collapsed into the back seat, breathing hard, her hands still trembling from adrenaline and cold and the sound of her mother's voice looping endlessly through her mind.

Carter slid in beside her, and for a moment, no one spoke.

"Someone knew we'd be there," Jennifer finally said. "Someone knew about the box."

"Or someone's been watching this church for ten years," Carter said grimly, "waiting for exactly this moment."

"Who?"

Carter's jaw tightened. "I don't know."

Rosa, still shaking in the front seat, spoke up quietly. "Whoever it was, they knew exactly where to find the compartment. That's not a coincidence. Someone else knew about that hiding place."

Jennifer's stomach twisted. "Who else could have known?"

Nobody answered.

Gerald, wedged into the far corner of the back seat, finally broke the silence. "Margaret," he said quietly. "If anyone else knew, it would be her."

Carter's eyes cut toward him sharply. "You've been remarkably quick to point fingers at your own mother tonight."

"Because I know what she's capable of," Gerald said, something raw and exhausted bleeding into his voice for the first time all night. "I've spent years telling myself I didn't know, that I was protecting the family by looking away. But I always knew, Carter. I just didn't want to admit what that made me."

Jennifer studied him, searching his face for the lie she expected to find there, and found instead something that looked uncomfortably like genuine shame.

"Then why are you still protecting her?" she asked quietly.

"I'm not," Gerald said. "Not anymore. Not after tonight."

Carter said nothing, his expression unreadable, though Jennifer noticed the way his hands had curled into fists against his knees, white-knuckled and rigid.

"The recording," she said finally, unable to hold the question back any longer. "Carter. My mother said not to trust you. Why would she say that if you were trying to help her?"

Carter was quiet for a long moment, staring out the window at the rain-streaked glass, and when he finally spoke, his voice had gone low and rough.

"I don't know," he admitted. "But I intend to find out. Even if the answer is something I don't want to hear."

Jennifer wanted to believe him. Some desperate, exhausted part of her did believe him, had believed him for weeks now, long before any of this had started unraveling around them. But her mother's voice, trembling and afraid in her final moments, warning her specifically about the one man Jennifer had let closer than anyone else in years, sat like a stone in her chest, impossible to ignore.

"I need to know what was in that box," she said. "Before anyone else gets to it first."

"So do I," Carter said quietly.

The car pulled away from the curb, and Jennifer pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching the city blur past in the rain, her mother's final warning echoing over and over in her mind, a question she couldn't yet answer.

If Carter wasn't the one her mother had been afraid of, then who was?

And if he was, how much longer did she have before she found out the truth the same way her mother had?

Her phone buzzed once against her palm.

Unknown number.

Jennifer's blood went cold before she'd even opened it.

I have what was in the box. If you want it back, you'll come alone. And you'll leave Carter Blackwood behind, exactly like your mother should have.