According to him, Ethan had paid him several thousand dollars every time he took his place.
Sometimes he attended business meetings.
Other times he stayed home with me.
Why?
To create alibis.
Ethan had been siphoning money from his company for months.
More than $1.8 million.
If someone said Ethan had been somewhere suspicious, I could swear my husband had spent the entire night beside me.
Without realizing it, I had become the perfect alibi.
But there was another complication.
The crash victim couldn’t be identified by his face or fingerprints.
And because the brothers were identical twins, an ordinary DNA comparison couldn’t easily establish which twin had died.
That evening, investigators found something else.
Two insurance policies.
One was a multimillion-dollar policy on Ethan.
The other was a substantial life insurance policy on me.
And on mine…
Ethan was the beneficiary.
The following day, police discovered that before the crash, someone had purchased gasoline, heavy plastic sheeting, rope, and gloves.
That same person had repeatedly searched online for an abandoned boat launch outside the city.
The man calling himself Aiden claimed Ethan had instructed him to meet there at four in the morning.
Then I received a text from an unknown number.
“Sis-in-law, figured out why I messed with the brakes yet?”
It was signed Aiden.
Another message arrived.
“I found out my brother planned to kill me. I only wanted his SUV to break down.”
Then one more.
“But answer one thing… are you absolutely sure Ethan is the one who died?”
I stared at those words for several minutes.
Because that was when I understood something horrifying.
I still didn’t know which brother was alive.
And the only person who might be able to prove it was me.
PART 3
I didn’t sleep that night.
I covered the dining table with photographs, text messages, notes, and screenshots until my own marriage looked like evidence from a criminal investigation.
I forced myself to remember every strange moment from the previous months.
One memory wouldn’t leave me alone.
Our anniversary dinner.
Ethan had held his wineglass in his left hand.
I had teased him about it.
“I hurt my wrist,” he told me.
That same evening at 11:07, fingerprint number three had entered our apartment.
Which twin had eaten dinner with me?
Which one had bought the flowers?
Which one had remained afterward?
I wrote down thirteen moments like that.
Then Detective Morgan sent me another message.
Investigators had recovered additional photos from the hidden phone.
The oldest picture hadn’t been taken eight months earlier.
It had been taken eleven months earlier.
Three months before the twins had supposedly reconnected.
Aiden had photographed me outside my office.
