Chapter 3

Viewership in Bram's livestream instantly spiked to a hundred thousand.

He held up his phone, staggering down to the underground garage, where a brand-new silver convertible gleamed with a cold, expensive luster under the lights.

"This is a custom mechanical hardtop, you feel me?"

Bram slid into the driver's seat looking smug as hell, mounting his phone on the dash.

"Your boy's in a good mood today, so I'm gonna give you a taste of what it's like to literally fly on the ground."

He hit the push-to-start, and the engine roared to life with a deafening growl.

Back in the greenhouse, Inspector Thorne had already gotten a call from the precinct and hurried off.

I sat alone at the tea table, methodically wiping the leaves of a delicate orchid while quietly watching the tablet screen.

Bram drove the car out of the garage and hit a winding mountain road.

He drove faster and faster, the howling wind messing up his blonde hair as he screamed wildly into the stream, cursing up a storm.

"This is the exact road! This is right where we sent that little deaf-mute dummy flying last time!"

Bram was clearly wasted, actually blurting this out with zero filter in front of tens of thousands of people.

"You know what the funniest part was? She was crawling on the ground, making these weird 'ah ah' noises, looking exactly like a stray dog with a snapped spine! Hahaha!"

The stream's chat instantly split in two—half of them were cursing him out, while the other half was hyping him up and wilding out.

I heard myself whisper in an incredibly flat tone, "Time's up."

Right at the exact moment Bram was laughing his hardest, the live feed suddenly glitched violently.

The sports car was tearing down the road when the infotainment screen suddenly flashed a blinding red.

Right after that, the sharp "click" of the doors auto-locking echoed clearly through the stream.

"What the hell? System glitch?"

The smile froze on Bram's face as he slammed his hands against the steering wheel and stomped on the brakes.

But the car didn't slow down at all; instead, it kept accelerating like a runaway horse.

Then, something even more horrifying happened.

That highly boasted custom hardtop roof suddenly began to close on its own.

But it didn't fold along its normal track; instead, it snapped downward at a completely warped angle that defied basic mechanics.

"Holy shit! Stop! Fucking stop!"

Bram screamed in pure terror, trying to duck out of the way, but the seatbelt clamped down dead tight at that exact second, pinning him firmly to the seat.

The heavy metal edge of the convertible roof clamped perfectly onto Bram's neck.

The mechanical motors let out a sickening, grinding screech as the roof kept pressing down.

One hundred thousand people in the stream watched helplessly as Bram's face turned from red to purple, his eyes bulging out of his skull.

His hands clawed desperately at the metal edge locked around his throat until his fingernails tore back, leaving him covered in blood.

He couldn't even force out a single cry for help, only managing to make weird choking noises—just like the deaf-mute girl he had been mocking minutes ago.

"Smash!" The sports car finally lost control and slammed into the side of the mountain; the live feed tumbled violently before cutting to static dead air.

I calmly turned off the tablet, picked up my spray bottle, and went back to misting my orchids.

The water droplets landed on the petals, looking crystal clear.

Less than twenty minutes later, the greenhouse doors were violently shoved open.

Detective Silas charged in like an enraged lion.

His chest was heaving heavily, his uniform covered in dust he must have picked up from god knows where.

"You did this! It had to be you!"

Silas rushed up into my face and smacked the spray bottle right out of my hand, spilling water all over the floor.

"Bram is dead! He got his neck snapped by his own car in front of a hundred thousand people on live stream!"

I took a step back, putting on a perfectly calculated look of shock.

"Oh my god, that's horrible. Detective, are you accusing me?"

"Who else could it be?!" Silas roared.

"Two cases, both victims killed purely out of revenge! Don't you dare tell me you don't know anything about this!"

I let out a small smile, crouched down, and unhurriedly picked up the dropped spray bottle.

"Detective Silas, if I were the killer, how on earth could I be having tea with Inspector Thorne here in the greenhouse while simultaneously hacking into a sports car miles away?"

"What, do you think I have some kind of supernatural powers?"

Silas froze, grinding his teeth together so hard it must have hurt.

"You could've hired a hacker! You could've done it by remote control!"

"What, do cops just solve cases by making up fairy tales now? Show me the evidence."

I looked him dead in the eye, my tone still perfectly mild, yet dripping with the pity of someone looking down from above.

"From start to finish, I have been sitting right here in this camera-filled greenhouse, not once laying a finger on a computer."

"If you really think I killed him, then show me a warrant."

"If you don't have one, please stop disturbing my plants' rest."

Silas clenched his fists so hard his knuckles popped, glaring at me as if trying to look completely through my soul.