legacy

Chapter 18 - VINCENT'S VOICE

They watched the dashboard footage with Detective Price. Rain struck the windshield. Vincent, Dante's driver, gripped the wheel as the car descended toward the service road.

"Brake feels soft," Vincent said on the recording.

Dante's younger voice answered, "Pull over if you can. Don't take the hill."

"Too late."

The camera jolted. A horn sounded. Vincent swerved away from a school bus and into the guardrail.

Dante turned his face away before the impact.

Marina sat beside him, saying nothing. He listened to Vincent's last warning twice.

"I blamed him," Dante said. "I thought he'd taken the road too fast."

"He saved people," Price replied. "And the footage makes that clear."

A second file on the card showed a garage worker speaking near the vehicle hours earlier. He held a checklist and said the brake system had failed its inspection. Another man off-camera ordered him to sign the release anyway.

The voice sounded like Luca's. Price sent it for verification rather than declaring the case solved.

Celeste called Dante that night from an unfamiliar number.

"Luca promised nobody would die," she said. "He said the car would break down before you reached the pier. When Vincent took the hill, everything went wrong."

"Why tell me now?"

"Because I'm not going to prison for him."

Dante swallowed his anger. "Give that statement to the detective."

"I'll trade it for immunity."

"You can ask a lawyer about that. Not me."

There was a pause, then a sound of movement on her end.

"Someone's at my door," she whispered.

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The call went dead. A moment later, Dante received a photograph of Celeste's abandoned phone on a dark sidewalk.

Underneath were three words: Stop asking questions.

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