Chapter 503

"You can't change the past; just hold onto the people you've got now."

I knew what he was getting at, and it hit a nerve. If this report on my parents' accident pointed to someone still around... he was basically telling me not to let it mess things up with the people who'd actually been good to me.

"Yeah, I get it," I nodded. "I've thought about it a lot, especially over the past few months."

It wasn't just talk. I'd spent so much time with that contract I found in my dad's notebook, going over every theory, every suspicion, struggling to make sense of it. And somehow, I'd finally started to accept some of it.

"Looks like making you wait wasn't for nothing," Cedric said, like he'd been expecting this. Now I understood why he'd been so cryptic, dropping hints but never giving me the full story.

He reached into his pocket, pulling out an envelope, but he didn't hand it over just yet. "You know Hayden Hart, right?"

My heart skipped. Hayden and I had dug into his dad's death too, se