ETHAN'S POV
The rain started just as I crossed the county line.
I didn't turn on the wipers at first. There was something cleansing about the water hammering against the windshield, something that matched the storm brewing inside me. My phone was off. No distractions.
No updates. No whispers. Just the hum of the road and the roar of the storm.
I needed silence to think. To breathe.
But even in silence, Ava's voice haunted me.
"No matter what they say, I believe you."
She had said that to me when everything began to spiral. Before the whistleblower. Before the headlines. Before Carl.
Carl.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter, my jaw clenched.
That man had walked back into our lives like a phantom out of a past neither of us remembered inviting in. And he came armed, not with weapons, but with truths no one had seen coming.
But were they truths? Or just smoke and mirrors, twisted facts made to look like revelations?
Either way, I couldn't let it slide.
