Vivienne's POV
I can't sleep.
Again.
It's been one week since I moved into this house, and I haven't slept more than two hours a night. Every time I close my eyes, I see her. Lily. My baby sister. Lying in the street with blood pooling around her head.
I sit up in bed and check the time on my phone. 2:47 AM.
The house is quiet. Ethan is probably asleep in his room down the hall. Sleeping peacefully while my sister is dead in the ground.
The thought makes my hands curl into fists.
I reach under my bed and pull out the shoebox. My hands shake as I open it. Inside are all the pieces of my investigation. Three years of searching. Three years of hunting for the man who killed Lily and drove away like she was nothing.
Photos. Police reports I wasn't supposed to have. Witness statements. Security camera footage that was too blurry to use in court but clear enough for me to recognize the car. A dark blue sedan. License plate partially visible.
It took me two years to track down that car. Another six months to find out who owned it that night.
Ethan Cross.
I pull out the newspaper clipping. The paper is soft now from being handled so many times. The headline screams at me: "LOCAL WOMAN KILLED IN HIT-AND-RUN."
Lily's photo is right there. Her senior picture from high school. She's smiling, her whole life ahead of her. She wanted to be a teacher. She loved kids. She had a chemistry test the next day that she'd been studying for.
She never got to take that test.
The article says the driver fled the scene. Police found broken glass and paint chips but no witnesses who saw the actual car. Just the sound of an engine speeding away.
My throat tightens. I've read this article a thousand times. Maybe more. I know every word by heart.
"Age 19," the article says. "Beloved daughter and sister. Remembered for her kindness and bright smile."
They make her sound like a saint. But Lily wasn't a saint. She was real. She snorted when she laughed too hard. She sang off-key in the shower. She stole my clothes and never gave them back. She called me every Sunday night to tell me about her week at college.
Until she didn't.
Until a drunk driver took her away from us and didn't even have the courage to stop.
I look at the date on the article. Three years, two months, and sixteen days ago.
I've been counting.
Mom stopped counting after the first year. She stopped doing a lot of things. She barely leaves her room now. Dad throws himself into his work at the hospital, operating on strangers while his own family falls apart.
And me? I threw away everything to find the man responsible.
I spent my inheritance tracking him down. Lost my job because I couldn't focus on anything else. My friends stopped calling because all I talked about was justice. Revenge. Making him pay.
Dr. Reeves, my therapist, said I was "losing myself in the grief." He said I needed to let go and move forward.
But how do you move forward when the person who destroyed your life gets to keep living his?
I stand up and walk to the small mirror on the wall. The woman staring back at me looks like a ghost. Pale skin. Dark circles under my eyes. I've lost fifteen pounds since Lily died. Can't remember the last time I ate a full meal.
I look like I'm dying.
Maybe I am.
Maybe we both are—me and Ethan. Two people drowning in the same ocean of guilt and grief.
I pick up the newspaper clipping and fold it carefully. Then I open my bedroom door as quietly as possible.
The hallway is dark. I can hear Ethan's bedroom door is closed. A thin line of light shows underneath—his bedside lamp is on. Maybe he can't sleep either.
Good.
I want him to suffer like I've suffered. I want him to feel what it's like to have something eating away at him from the inside. I want him to wake up every morning and remember what he did.
I kneel down in front of his door and slide the newspaper clipping underneath.
For a moment, I just stay there. On my knees. In the dark. Wondering if this is really who I've become.
A woman who stalks and torments a broken man.
A woman who pays cash for a room in a stranger's house just so she can watch him squirm.
A woman who's forgotten how to be anything except angry.
I hear movement inside Ethan's room. Footsteps. He's awake.
I scramble back to my feet and rush to my room, closing the door silently behind me. My heart pounds so hard I think it might burst out of my chest.
I press my ear against the door and listen.
Ethan's door opens. I hear him step into the hallway. Then silence.
He's seen it. The newspaper clipping. He's reading it right now.
Does he recognize Lily? Does he even remember what she looked like? Or was she just a bump in the road to him? An obstacle he drove away from?
More silence.
Then I hear something that makes my blood run cold.
Ethan is crying.
Not quiet tears. Deep, broken sobs that sound like they're being torn from his chest. Like he's been holding them in for years and they're finally escaping.
"I'm sorry," he chokes out. "God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
He's talking to himself. Or to Lily. Or to no one.
Part of me—the part that's been dead since the night Lily died—feels satisfied. Good. Let him cry. Let him hurt.
But another part of me, a smaller part that I thought I'd buried, feels something else.
Pity.
No. I shake my head. I won't feel sorry for him. I can't.
He killed my sister. He ran away. He's been living free while Lily is in a grave.
I hear his bedroom door close. The crying stops. Everything goes quiet again.
I sit on my bed and stare at the wall. What happens now? He knows that I know. Tomorrow morning, he'll look at me differently. He'll understand why I'm really here.
My phone buzzes. A text from Dr. Reeves.
"How are you doing? Have you eaten today?"
I don't answer. I can't explain to him that I'm sitting in a dead man's house at 3 AM, listening to him cry over my sister's death.
Another buzz. This time it's an unknown number.
I frown and open the message.
My heart stops.
It's a photo. Of me. Taken tonight. Through my bedroom window.
I'm sitting on my bed with the shoebox open. All of Lily's case files spread around me.
Someone was watching me.
The text that follows makes my skin crawl:
"I know who you are, Vivienne Ashford. I know what you're doing. And I know what Ethan Cross did. But you're not the only one who wants him to pay. Tomorrow night. The old warehouse on Fifth Street. Come alone, or I go to the police with everything. Including proof that you've known about him for months and didn't report him. That makes you an accessory. See you tomorrow."
The phone slips from my shaking hands.
Someone else knows. Someone else has been watching both of us.
But who?
And what do they want?
I run to my window and look out. The street is empty. No cars. No people. Whoever took that photo is gone now.
I grab my phone and stare at the message again. The old warehouse on Fifth Street. Tomorrow night.
It could be a trap. It probably is a trap.
But what choice do I have? If this person goes to the police, I'll be arrested too. Everything I've done—tracking Ethan, moving into his house, tormenting him—it's all illegal. Obstruction of justice. Maybe worse.
I look at the time. 3:15 AM.
In less than twenty-four hours, I'll know who else is playing this twisted game.
And I'll find out if I'm the hunter or the hunted.
My hands won't stop shaking. I press them against my chest and try to breathe.
Lily's face flashes in my mind. Her smile. Her laugh. The way she used to hug me and say, "You're the best big sister ever."
"I'm doing this for you," I whisper to her ghost. "I'm doing all of this for you."
But deep down, I'm starting to wonder if that's really true.
Or if I'm doing this because I don't know how to be anything except broken anymore.