My hands shook violently as I lifted the dark, unfamiliar smartphone from Megan’s desk. The office around me hummed with the mundane sounds of whirring printers and low chatter, but to me, the world had shrunk down to the cold glass in my palm. Megan stood beside me, biting her bottom lip, her face completely drained of color as she watched my reaction.
I entered the simple four-digit passcode written at the bottom of Claire’s frantic note. The screen unlocked instantly, revealing a completely blank home wallpaper with only a single application icon sitting in the center: the system gallery. My thumb hovered over the icon for a long moment while my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I tapped the gallery icon, and a single video file appeared at the top of the grid, timestamped just three days before my wedding. The thumbnail was dark, showing the interior of a dimly lit restaurant booth. With a shaky breath, I pressed play and held the speaker close to my ear, praying that whatever was on the recording would explain my sister’s terrifying final words.
The video began with grainy footage of two people sitting across from each other at a back table. As the camera adjusted to the low light, my chest tightened until I couldn’t breathe. Sitting on the left side of the booth was my husband, Ryan, dressed in a sharp black suit. Sitting directly across from him was a woman I had never seen before, holding a manila folder filled with financial documents.
“Are you sure the insurance policy is active?” Ryan’s voice came through the speaker, crisp and entirely devoid of the warmth he always showed me. The woman nodded, sliding a pen across the table toward him. “As long as the marriage is legally finalized, the primary beneficiary clause takes effect immediately upon accidental death,” she replied in a flat, professional tone.
Ryan leaned back, a cold, calculating smile spreading across his face as he picked up the pen. “Good,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming with a ruthless ambition that made my blood run cold. “Alice trusts me completely. She won’t suspect a thing until it’s far too late for her to do anything about it.”
The video cut out abruptly, leaving the screen completely black. I stumbled backward against the edge of Megan’s desk, the phone slipping from my fingers as tears burned in the corners of my eyes. Everything Claire had tried to tell me at my bachelorette party rushed back into my mind, crashing over me with devastating clarity.
Claire hadn’t been jealous or cold toward Ryan out of spite; she had discovered his horrific plan to marry me for a massive, secret life insurance payout. She had been trying to protect me all along, and I had dismissed her warnings as petty family drama. But as I stared at the dark phone screen, a horrifying realization struck me: why was Claire the one who died on my wedding day instead?
Read the next page to discover the secret journal entry that revealed what really happened to Claire’s car on the highway.
