Chapter 4 - HIS VOICE
At first, the recording contained only footsteps and the hollow echo of the parking garage.
Then I heard Grant.
“You should have stayed out of this.”
His voice was calm.
There was no fear or confusion in it.
Eli’s recorded voice answered, “What did you do to her car?”
A metallic object struck the concrete floor.
Grant laughed softly.
“She signed the insurance documents yesterday.”
My knees weakened.
Two weeks earlier, Grant had brought home a stack of financial papers. Small colored tabs marked every place I needed to sign.
He said they were routine updates.
I had signed without reading them.
On the recording, Eli demanded that Grant step away from my car.
Grant answered, “After she drives tomorrow, none of this will matter.”
I stopped the audio.
Silence swallowed the apartment.
“That could mean something else,” I whispered.
Eli stared at me.
We both knew it could not.
I remembered Grant asking what time I planned to leave for work.
I remembered how irritated he became when I said I might work from home.
I remembered him insisting that I drive because rain was expected in the morning.
Each memory changed shape.
My husband had not been planning my day.
He had been planning my death.
“Play the rest,” I said.
“You don’t need to hear it.”
“Play it.”
Eli restarted the recording.
His recorded voice said he was calling the police.
Then I heard the first blow.
The impact was dull and sudden.
Eli’s breathing became ragged.
Grant demanded that he delete the recording.
Eli refused.
Another impact followed.
I looked at the injuries on my brother’s arm and finally understood that each mark represented a moment when he could have surrendered.
He had not.
Grant’s voice became colder.
“No one is going to believe you. Maya already thinks you hate me.”
Eli answered through broken breaths.
“She’ll believe the recording.”
“I’ll tell her you attacked me because you wanted me.”
Grant then described the photograph.
He explained how he would crop it.
He said he would show it to me before Eli could reach me.
My stomach turned.
The lie had not been improvised.
Grant had built it carefully around my brother’s identity and my own buried prejudice.
He knew exactly which accusation would make me stop listening.
The recording ended with Grant saying, “Tomorrow, she gets in that car.”
May you like
Eli’s voice answered, weak but steady.
“No. She doesn’t.”
