My Roommate Framed Me for Crashing Car—It’s Owner Was My Brother Chapter 05
Grant turned toward me. One look, and he froze.
Then he spun back around and grabbed a fistful of Madison’s hair.
Madison let out a piercing shriek as he yanked her backward.
Ethan went pale and tried to step in.
He barely made it a step before two of Grant’s security guys shoved him away. He hit the dirt several yards back and came up spitting grit.
Tears streamed down Madison’s face, but she still jabbed a finger at me.
“Grant, it really was that bitch Grace! She’s the one who wrecked your bike!”
“Look at her! She looks broke. There’s no way she
can pay for a million–dollar bike. Make her pay;
don’t let her get away with this!”
Ethan scrambled up and joined in.
“Grant, you’ve got it wrong. It really was Grace…”
I looked at their twisted faces and let out a
helpless sigh.
“Bro.”
I said it softly.
That one word landed like a bomb. The mountain
road went silent.
Grant went rigid at the sound of my voice and
released Madison at once.
She lost her balance and dropped hard onto the
gravel.
Grant crossed the distance between us in three
strides. Then he saw the bloody gash across my
thigh.
His eyes went red. A vein stood out at his temple
as he whirled on his security team.
“Are you all fucking blind? Get the first–aid kit over
here!”
Then he turned back and crouched beside me, all
that fury giving way to panic.
“Jesus, Grace.”
“Who the hell did this to you? Does it hurt? I’m
taking you to the hospital.”
His voice shook with worry. The Grant Whitmore
everyone in Cedar Ridge feared had vanished
without a trace.
The whole group froze.
Everyone stared in disbelief, barely daring to
breathe.
Ryan, who’d been throwing his weight around
minutes earlier, was visibly shaking.
One of Grant’s security guards hurried over with a
first–aid kit and expertly cleaned my wound.
With a guard supporting me, I got to my feet and
waved Grant off when he tried to carry me to the
car.
“I don’t need a hospital. It’s just a surface wound.
We’re not done here yet.”
I turned to Madison as she struggled to her feet.
“Bad luck, Madison. That terrifying campus
menace you keep talking about happens to be my
brother.”
I paused, watching the color drain from her face.
“And you didn’t borrow this bike, did you?”
“Grant never lets anyone touch it. You took the
spare key fob he left on the desk while you were
helping clean the SGA office, then used it to get into his private equipment garage, didn’t you?”
When I’d called him earlier, I’d heard Grant on the other end raging that his bike was missing.
Between that and Madison’s bizarre obsession
with making me switch today, her whole scheme
was suddenly obvious.
She’d stolen the bike to show off, damaged
and
then needed a scapegoat.
By then, Madison and Ethan looked shell–shocked. Both were trembling so badly they could barely stand.
Ethan stumbled backward, trying to make himself
invisible, and wouldn’t meet Grant’s eyes.
But Madison still wouldn’t give up.
With her mix of insecurity and vanity, Madison
would keep lying until there was nowhere left to
run.
She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, wiped
the corner of her mouth, and made one last
desperate attempt.
“So what if you’re brother and sister?”
she screamed, pointing wildly at the bike lying in
two pieces.
“Grace was riding it when it broke! Everyone saw
it!”
“They can all testify! I wasn’t the one riding it when
it snapped!”
She looked around, desperately searching the faces of the cycling club for support.
“Right? You all saw it! Tell them. You all saw it!”
The riders who’d been firmly on her side minutes
ago suddenly stared at the ground, avoiding her like she was contagious.
These were the Whitmores. No one was about to
make an enemy of that family for Madison Blake.
Her refusal to give up was almost laughable.
Grant took one furious step forward when she
kept arguing.
I reached out, stopped my brother, and shook my head.
I brushed the dust from the helmet in my hand and
looked at Madison with open disgust.
“You want proof?”
“Fine. I’ll give you proof. Then even you won’t be
able to talk your way around it.”