Chapter 2
The room tilted on its axis when Ryan spoke.
“Sorry to crash the party,” he said, his voice smooth as expensive whiskey. “But Eleanor’s last will and testament needs to be read. Immediately.”
The lawyer stepped forward, clearing his throat. He said the will had been signed two days before the fall, in front of two witnesses. It left ninety percent of the entire Hale family estate—worth more than forty million dollars—to Ryan. The remaining ten percent was split between Lila’s wedding fund and a small donation to the local animal shelter.
Daniel and Margaret got nothing.
I got nothing.
Lily got nothing.
Ryan leaned against the newel post, crossing his arms. “Eleanor told me she was tired of Daniel letting a gold digger run her house into the ground,” he said, looking right at me. “She said I was the only one who deserved to carry on the family name.”
Margaret screamed, lunging for him, but two officers held her back. Daniel just stood there, frozen, like someone had pulled all the bones out of his body. I tried to tell the cops what Lily had whispered, tried to point at Ryan and scream he’d made her lie, but no one would listen.
The lead detective pulled me aside, his face hard. “Kids don’t lie about things like this, ma’am,” he said. “Especially not five-year-olds. You need a lawyer. Now.”
They cuffed me in front of everyone.
The metal bit into my wrists as they walked me out the front door. Neighbors cheered. Someone yelled “Rot in hell!” I looked over my shoulder, begging Daniel with my eyes to believe me, to say something, to do anything. But he just stared at the floor, his jaw tight, as the cop car door slammed shut between us.
I was questioned at the station for seven straight hours.
They asked me the same questions over and over. Why had I married Daniel? Had I ever fought with Grandma? How much money did I stand to inherit if she died? I told them about Lily’s whisper, about Ryan’s sudden appearance with the will, about the way he’d smiled when he saw me in cuffs. The detective just took notes, his pen scratching across the page, and shook his head.
“No proof,” he said, when they finally let me call a bail bondsman at two in the morning. “Just a he-said-she-said with a dead woman and a scared kid. You’re lucky we’re releasing you at all.”
I walked out of the station into the cold Texas night with nothing but the clothes on my back and a court date three weeks away. My purse was still at the mansion. My phone was still on the coffee table by Lily’s crayons. I had no keys, no wallet, no one to call except one person.
Mia.
My old college roommate, the only friend I’d kept when I married into the Hales and everyone else decided I was just a gold digger. She showed up ten minutes later in her beat-up Honda Civic, a blanket and a hot coffee in her hand. She didn’t ask any questions when I climbed into the passenger seat and broke down sobbing. She just turned up the heater and rubbed my back until I could breathe again.
“You’re staying with me,” she said, pulling onto the highway. “And we’re going to burn Ryan Hale to the ground. Together.”
I slept on her couch that night, wrapped in the scratchy blanket, staring at the ceiling. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Lily’s small face, trembling as she lied to her father. I saw Ryan’s cold smile. I felt Grandma’s warm blood on my hands.
I got up at dawn, before Mia woke up, and sat at her kitchen table with a pen and a notebook. I wrote down every single thing I knew about Ryan Hale. Every fight I’d ever heard him have with Grandma. Every time he’d asked her for money. Every time he’d looked at Daniel like he wanted to take everything he had.
By the time the sun came up, I had three pages of notes.
And one thing stood out, over and over again.
Ryan had massive gambling debts.
I’d heard Grandma yelling at him on the phone three months before, saying she wouldn’t pay another cent of his “stupid, reckless mistakes.” I’d seen envelopes from debt collectors in the mail, marked URGENT, addressed to him at the mansion. He’d been desperate for money for years.
Desperate enough to push an old woman down the stairs.
Desperate enough to make a five-year-old lie.
I closed the notebook, my hand shaking. I didn’t have proof yet. But I was going to find it.
May you like
No matter what it cost me.
I was going to get my daughter back. I was going to clear my name. And Ryan Hale was going to pay for every single thing he’d done.
