Page 172 of Broken Destiny

It looked like a man in the driver’s seat, though I couldn’t tell clearly yet.

Then the passenger door opened.

A woman stepped out.

She had a sling across her arm.

Two seconds later, she turned around.

My breath stopped.

Jiya.

She opened the rear passenger door and pulled out two bags.

I immediately recognized them.

They were the same bags my family had put the money in for Jeremy.

My stomach clenched painfully.

I watched as she walked to the front door and dropped the bags there. She opened them, took out the wads of cash, and held them up to the camera, so it could see that it was money. Then she placed the cash back inside and tilted the bags, showing their contents clearly. Next, she pulled out a piece of paper, wrote a note, and placed it carefully on top of the bags. She turned, walked down the steps, and entered the car again on the passenger side.

The man in the driver’s seat turned toward the camera at that exact second.

It was Alex.

My stomach clenched so hard it felt like a fist had tightened around my insides.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Is this real?

My hand trembled as I reached for the mouse.

I checked the date and the time stamp on the video again, forcing myself to focus, to read every number carefully.

It was the next day after Jeremy had kidnapped the girls.

I stared at the laptop screen, my vision blurring for a second before I blinked hard and forced myself to keep looking.

My mother had shown my family and me a clipping of when the bags were dropped at Jiya’s apartment.

I had watched that video so many times over the past years—obsessively—trying to read her expression, searching for guilt, for deception, for anything that would justify the anger I carried toward her.

All I had seen was her face.

Now, as the memory resurfaced, something new cut through the fog.

She had a sling.

She had been shot too.

I dragged in a shaky breath and watched the current video again.

Jiya had returned the money. She had placed it at the door herself—deliberately and openly. But what about the bag in her house? Had she come back and taken just one?

I rewound the clip and watched it again.