Wait... I'm back. Before 6 hours before her car accident. I know how this ends this time

I stared at the glowing phone screen, the letters burning into my retinas like acid.

Truck Unit 42.

A forty-ton Peterbilt tri-axle flatbed registered under the commercial operating license of Vance-Sterling Freight Dynamics—the logistics subsidiary of my primary corporation.

The horror that slammed into my chest was infinite, suffocating, and profound.

In my first life, I had believed the crash was an act of God. An unavoidable catastrophe of worn brake shoes, bad timing, and slick autumn roads. The state troopers had ruled it an accidental mechanical failure; the corporate insurance had settled out of court for four million dollars; and the driver, a veteran long-haul operator named Thomas Burke, had died on impact when the rig flipped onto its side after obliterating Clara’s sedan.

It wasn't an accident.

It was an execution.

And the target hadn't been Clara.

The target had been me.

On Tuesday evenings at 7:30 PM, I always drove that exact silver sedan down Main Street to pick up our weekly takeout dinner from the Italian trattoria on 4th Avenue before heading home. Clara had only taken the car that night because her own hybrid was in the shop for an oil change.

Whoever rigged that truck wasn't trying to murder a landscape architect. They were trying to decapitate the Chief Executive Officer of Vance Logistics on the eve of our four-hundred-million-dollar institutional buyout.

And the only person who had the administrative authority to bypass the mandatory fleet maintenance logs for Truck Unit 42 was my Chief Operating Officer.

Julian Cross.

"Leo? What is it?" Clara asked, lifting her head from my chest, her sharp green eyes instantly detecting the sudden, terrifying change in my posture. "Who was that text from?"

I smoothly locked the screen, sliding the phone back into my pocket, forcing my facial muscles into an iron mask of calm professionalism.

"Just an automated server alert from the dispatch hub in Waukegan," I lied, my voice steady, though my stomach churned with nausea. "A minor telematics glitch on one of our long-haul routes. Nothing to worry about."

"You went completely white," she whispered, stepping back, looking at me with searching, worried eyes.

"I'm fine, Clara," I said, stepping past her toward the hallway closet to grab my leather jacket. "Listen to me: I need to run down to the regional maintenance depot for ninety minutes to sign off on a fleet compliance release. I'll be back by four o'clock."

I turned, pointing a finger at her with absolute, unwavering intensity.

"Do not leave this house. Do not open the garage. Do not invite anyone inside. Lock the deadbolt, turn on the perimeter security alarm, and keep your phone in your hand. If anyone—even Julian, even our neighbors—knocks on that door, you do not answer it. Do you understand me?"

Clara looked at me as if I had spoken in tongues, but the cold, deadly authority in my voice compelled her to nod.

"I understand, Leo," she murmured softly. "I'll stay right here in the studio. I'll lock the doors."

I stepped forward, kissed her forehead with trembling lips, and sprinted out the front door into the brisk afternoon wind.

I jumped into my black four-wheel-drive SUV, slammed the key into the ignition, and tore out of the driveway, the tires screaming against the asphalt as I threw the transmission into drive.

I checked my dashboard clock: 2:14 PM.

Five hours and twenty-eight minutes until the collision.

I pulled out my phone, connected it to the vehicle’s hands-free console, and dialed the private extension of our fleet maintenance director, Marcus Cole.

The phone rang four times before a gruff, gravelly voice answered over the background clatter of pneumatic impact wrenches and diesel exhaust:

"Cole here. Make it quick, boss, we're swapping out a transmission on the express rigs."

"Marcus, listen to me very carefully," I said, cutting through his greeting like a razor blade. "Where is Truck Unit 42 right now?"

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, the sound of papers rustling.

"Unit 42? That rig shouldn't even be on the road, Mr. Vance," Cole replied, his tone shifting into puzzled concern. "She was red-tagged for a master cylinder rebuild on Friday. The hydraulic lines on her secondary pneumatic brake booster were leaking fluid."

"Who authorized her release, Marcus?!" I roared, weaving through traffic on Route 41 at seventy miles an hour.

"Julian Cross," Cole answered without hesitation. "He came into the shop at six this morning with an emergency dispatch order from the central office. Said we had a high-priority structural steel shipment heading down to the industrial park in Gary. He brought in his own private contractor to drive her—some guy named Thomas Burke who used to drive heavy loads for our mining accounts in West Virginia."

My knuckles turned dead white against the leather steering wheel.

Julian had signed the release. Julian had hand-picked the driver. Julian had sent an un-stoppable, forty-ton steel battering ram onto the highway with compromised brakes, pointed straight at the municipal corridor where he expected me to be driving at 7:42 PM.

"Marcus," I said, my voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register that made the veteran mechanic stop talking. "I need you to open the master telematics portal on your terminal right now. Pull the live satellite coordinates for Unit 42, lock down the remote engine cutoff codes, and send the telemetry straight to my dashboard."