Chapter 1 - THE SECOND IMPACT
The high-pitched whine of my father’s engine revving in reverse cut through the ringing in my ears like a serrated knife.
I was pinned. The driver’s side door of my sedan was crushed inward, wedging my knee against the center console. Smoke curled up from the ruptured dashboard, carrying the bitter, chemical stench of deployed airbag gunpowder and hot oil. Through the cracked side mirror, I could see the bright red taillights of my father’s heavy heavy-duty pickup truck glowing in the pitch-black night.
He wasn't backing away to escape. He was lining up his rear bumper with my driver's door to crush the frame entirely—to finish what his first impact had failed to do.
Think, Maya, think!
Pain flared through my left side as I fumbled blindly beneath the passenger seat for my fallen phone. My fingers brushed against cold metal—not my phone, but a heavy steel emergency glass-breaker flashlight I kept in the side pocket.
Behind me, tires screeched on the wet asphalt.
He was coming.
I didn't try to pull my trapped legs free. I reached across the passenger seat, threw my upper body into the glove compartment area, and slammed my elbow onto the gear shift, knocking my car from Park into Neutral.
CLACK.
An instant later, my father’s truck slammed into the rear quarter-panel of my car. The force of the impact sent my vehicle spinning sideways off the shoulder, sliding across the wet grass toward a steep drainage ditch. The truck's bumper scraped violently against my driver’s side door, tearing away the outer metal skin with a deafening screech instead of crushing my skull.
My car tipped backward, sliding six feet down into the muddy embankment before coming to a jarring halt against a thick oak tree.
Silence descended over the road—dense, heavy, and suffocating.
Up on the shoulder, the truck’s engine idled. I lay contorted in the passenger footwell, gasping for air, clutching the steel flashlight. Through the shattered rear window, I saw the truck's reverse lights click off. The driver's door opened.
My father’s heavy leather boots stepped onto the wet asphalt. He walked slowly to the edge of the embankment, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness, searching for my wreck.
"Is she dead, Richard?" My mother’s voice carried clearly through the cold night air from the truck’s passenger seat. She didn't sound frantic. She sounded like an accountant checking off line items on a balance sheet.
"The cabin collapsed," my father replied smoothly, his flashlight beam sweeping over my crushed roof. "No movement."
"Search the car for her briefcase," my mother commanded. "Make sure the signed trust amendments aren't in the glove box before the highway patrol gets here."
My heart hammered against my cracked ribs. They hadn't just tried to murder me for my grandfather's estate; they were hunting for the original copy of my grandfather’s true last will—the document I had quietly retrieved from our family lawyer’s safe-deposit box four hours ago.
My father began descending the muddy slope, his heavy boots sliding in the dirt.
I squeezed my eyes shut, holding my breath, forcing my trembling body to stay completely motionless in the shadows beneath the dashboard. I slipped my thumb over the flashlight’s power button.
His flashlight beam struck my face through the broken passenger window. The light lingered on my closed eyes, my blood-stained forehead, my limp hand resting on the floorboard.
He reached his leather-gloved hand through the broken window, feeling along the seat toward the glove compartment.
Now.
I snapped my eyes open, raised the steel flashlight with both hands, and brought the hardened tungsten tip down with all my remaining strength directly onto his gloved knuckles!
CRACK!
My father let out a sharp, guttural scream of pain, jerking his hand backward as his fingers fractured. The flashlight fell from his grip into my lap.
Without giving him a second to recover, I aimed the high-lumen tactical beam directly into his eyes, blinding him instantly in the dark ravine. He stumbled backward into the mud, swearing violently, clutching his crushed hand.
"Richard! What is happening down there?!" my mother shrieked from the top of the ridge.
Headlights suddenly swept across the highway above. A heavy air horn blared—a long-haul semi-truck was slowing down on the shoulder, its high beams illuminating my father standing in the ditch, his face illuminated in bright white light.
My father looked up at the highway, his face twisting into a mask of pure, frantic panic.
"Richard! Get up here now! Someone's stopping!" my mother screamed.
My father cast one final, murderous glare down at me in the wreck. "This isn't over, Maya," he spat through his teeth.
He scrambled up the muddy bank, threw himself into the driver's seat of his truck, and peeled out onto the highway, his tires throwing gravel into the night air as he fled into the darkness.
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I lay back against the crumpled floorboard, listening to the heavy truck engine fade into the distance, clutching my grandfather's envelope against my bleeding chest.
I was alive. But as the distant sound of sirens began to wail in the cold night, I realized my family had declared war—and they would stop at nothing to eliminate me.
