Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 42
The tanker stopped sideways across Harrington Bridge, trapping Ivy’s convoy between steel barriers and the vehicle behind it. Fog hid the river below and turned the approaching headlights into pale circles. The protection supervisor ordered both cars into reverse.
A delivery truck struck the rear escort before it could move. Armed figures emerged wearing emergency-response jackets, shouting that the tanker was leaking. Their uniforms were convincing until an officer noticed they carried no breathing equipment.
Ivy pulled her mother below the window line. The poisoned tea had taught her that Victor’s network preferred accidents and official appearances. She refused to leave the armored vehicle for strangers who already knew her name.
Arianna and Hayden followed the camera feed from the hospital command room. Police units were eight minutes away, while the attackers had begun cutting the convoy’s communications. Hayden contacted a Scott freight dispatcher whose trucks used the same route.
Two Scott tankers approaching from the opposite side stopped before the bridge and activated their hazard systems. Their drivers blocked civilian traffic and transmitted the attack over independent radios. The ambush could no longer remain invisible.
The false responders attached a device to Ivy’s door. Her protection officer recognized a shaped charge and moved everyone into the second vehicle through the connecting defensive formation. Gunfire struck the pavement as they crossed.
Ivy’s mother stumbled between the cars. Ivy turned back, exposing herself long enough to pull her upright. A bullet broke the mirror inches from Ivy’s head, but the armored door closed behind them.
Sirens reached the bridge as the attackers abandoned their equipment and ran toward the maintenance stairs. One leaped into a boat waiting beneath the structure. The others were arrested before they cleared the lower platform.
The tanker carried water rather than fuel. Its driver had been paid through an account linked to Leonard Graves, though he claimed the job was merely blocking traffic for an insurance scheme. Victor’s protocol divided the crime so no participant understood the planned murder.
Ivy and her mother survived with minor injuries. When Arianna reached the secure clinic, Ivy was washing blood from a cut on her hand. She admitted that part of her had considered abandoning the case before the convoy left.
“Being afraid doesn’t make your testimony dishonest,” Arianna said. She did not ask Ivy to be brave for her or for future Ivy. The decision had to belong to the girl who would live with it now.
Ivy chose to continue. She asked prosecutors to record a complete deposition immediately so her evidence would survive even if she did not. Her mother signed a statement supporting the decision despite visible fear.
Evelyn identified one captured attacker as a former Scott security contractor. She had dismissed him for selling executive travel schedules, but Victor later hired him through North Road Fleet Services. The conspiracy kept circling back to access sold by trusted employees.
Hayden confronted Evelyn about withholding the contractor’s name. She insisted she had forgotten him among dozens of compromised staff. Hayden answered that selective forgetting had always been her most convenient defense.
The Lantern directory updated after the failed bridge attack. L-18 changed from active to incomplete, and L-19 opened. Its target field contained no name—only a photograph of Emmy entering volleyball practice.
Arianna’s anger overpowered caution. Emmy had no connection to corporate evidence beyond supporting Arianna publicly. Victor targeted her because hurting an ordinary friend could make Arianna retreat more effectively than threatening another protected executive.
Maple Valley High locked down before practice ended. Officers searched the restored gym and found no device, but Emmy’s car had been moved from the student lot. A handwritten note waited beneath its windshield wiper.
The note instructed Arianna to persuade Ivy to withdraw her testimony before noon. If she refused, Emmy’s car would be returned “with its passenger inside.” School attendance records showed Emmy never entered her last class.
Arianna called Emmy’s phone. A man answered and played the sound of someone breathing through tape. Then he gave an address connected to the abandoned North Road repair shop.
Before the call ended, Emmy’s voice broke through clearly. “Don’t come,” she shouted. A blow silenced her, and the man replied, “Then send Ivy instead.”