Chapter 5
Marge lived in a small bungalow with a white picket fence and a garden full of roses.
She hugged me so tight when we walked in I could barely breathe.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” she said. “About your mom. About all of this.”
She made us coffee.
Sat us down at her kitchen table.
And then she brought out a cardboard box.
Old, dusty, labeled with my mom’s name in thick black marker.
“Your mom gave this to me the week before she died,” Marge said. “Said if anything ever happened to her, I was to give it to you when you were old enough to fight.”
She opened the box.
Inside were stacks of paper.
Ledgers.
Emails printed out.
Photocopies of bank transfers.
All showing the same thing.
Over five years, Victoria and Harold Hale had siphoned nearly three million dollars from the Maple Street Housing Project.
Money meant to build homes for single moms, for veterans, for families who’d lost everything.
Money they’d used to buy their penthouse.
Their fancy cars.
Their country club memberships.
And at the bottom of the box was a police report.
Filed the day before my mom died.
By her.
Stating she’d received death threats.
That her car tires had been slashed.
That she was scared for her life.
The police had closed the case.
Said there was no evidence.
I ran my fingers over my mom’s signature on the report.
Tears blurred my vision.
“She knew,” I said, my voice breaking. “She knew they were going to kill her.”
Marge nodded, her own eyes wet.
“She begged me to keep this safe,” she said. “Said Victoria would stop at nothing to get it back. And she was right. Two days after the funeral, Victoria showed up here. Asked if your mom had left anything with me. Said it was ‘family business.’ I told her no. She hasn’t spoken to me since.”
Ethan was quiet, staring at the ledgers.
“My dad knew about this?” he said.
Marge looked at him.
“Your dad was weak,” she said gently. “Victoria wore the pants in that family. She told him what to do, and he did it. But he loved your mom. He never wanted anyone to get hurt.”
Before Ethan could answer, there was a loud crash from the front of the house.
Glass breaking.
Marge jumped up.
“What was that?”
We ran to the living room.
The front window was shattered.
A brick lay on the carpet, wrapped in a piece of paper.
Ethan picked it up.
Unfolded it.
His face went white.
“What is it?” I said.
He handed it to me.
It was a photo.
Of me.
Taken that morning, outside the bank.
And written on the back, in the same red ink as the spray paint:
NEXT TIME IT’S A BULLET.
Marge grabbed her phone.
“I’m calling the police,” she said.
“No,” Ethan said. “It won’t do any good. We both know who’s doing this. The police won’t touch Victoria Hale. She’s too rich. Too powerful.”
He looked at me.
“We need to hit her where it hurts,” he said. “We need to get to my dad.”
“Harold?” I said. “Why would he help us? He’s just as guilty as she is.”
“Because he’s scared,” Ethan said. “I’ve seen it in his eyes for years. He’s been living with this for twenty years. He’s tired. And if Victoria is willing to kill to keep this secret… he knows he could be next.”
He was right.
Harold was the weak link.
The only one who could testify against Victoria.
The only one who could get the hold lifted from the safety deposit box.
“We need to find him,” I said. “Before Victoria finds out we’re onto him.”
Ethan nodded.
“I know where he goes every Wednesday afternoon,” he said. “To the old golf course on the edge of town. He goes alone. To think. It’s the only place my mom never follows him.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go,” I said.
I looked at the photo in my hand.
At the red ink.
At Victoria’s threat.
She thought she could scare us.
Thought we’d run.
But she was wrong.
May you like
We had nothing left to lose.
And everything to fight for.
