Chapter 4

The lightning wood wasn' t a coincidence. It was a setup. My father was using me as a blueprint for Gabrielle' s success.

The realization sent a chill through me. I started to rethink everything, every memory.

I thought about my mother' s last days. Andrew had told everyone it was a sudden illness, a fever that took her quickly. He had isolated her in her room, not letting anyone, not even me, see her. He said it was for her own good, to let her rest.

Now, that isolation felt sinister.

A memory surfaced, hazy and dreamlike, from when I was a little girl. My mother, her face pale and sweaty, whispering to me.

"The secret' s in the sauce, baby... a little water reveals the truth."

At the time, I thought she was just talking about barbecue. A simple kitchen tip.

But what if it meant more?

I rushed back to my room and pulled out her leather-bound recipe book. The one he let me keep, probably thinking it was worthless without the smoker it was designed for.

My hands trembled as I opened it to the section on barbecue sauce. The recipes were simple, classic. The kind of thing you' d find in any Texas cookbook.

Her words echoed in my head. A little water reveals the truth.

I took a glass of water and a small dropper. Carefully, I let a single drop fall onto the page, right over the recipe for her "Classic Texas Mop Sauce."

The black ink began to blur.

But underneath, another ink appeared, a faint, brownish color that had been invisible before. As the water spread, the hidden text became clear.

It wasn't a recipe.

It was my mother' s diary.

I dripped more water, page after page, my heart pounding with each revealed line.

She wrote about Andrew' s affair with Gabrielle' s mother. She wrote about his resentment, how he felt the Johns barbecue legacy, which had always passed down through the women of the family, should have been his.

She wrote about his plot. He was slowly poisoning her. He was planning to bring Gabrielle and her mother into the family, to steal the legacy that was rightfully mine.

He didn't just let my mother die.

He murdered her.

The book fell from my hands. The truth was so much uglier than I could have ever imagined. My quest for vengeance wasn't just about a competition anymore.

It was about justice for my mother.