Chapter 2
The FBI led them out in cuffs ten minutes later, Carol screaming that I’d set them up, Ethan spitting threats over his shoulder that made the agents tighten their grip on his arms.
Special Agent Miller, a tall woman with gray streaks in her dark hair and a scar across her left eyebrow, unlocked the sitting room door herself.
“Are you alright?” she asked, nodding at my jaw.
I touched the bruise, the skin hot and tender under my fingers.
“I will be,” I said.
She gave me a card with her cell number, told me to call if I remembered anything else, and left two uniformed officers behind to collect the laptop and take my formal statement.
By the time they drove away, the sun was coming up over the Dallas skyline, painting the mansion’s floor-to-ceiling windows pink and gold.
The house was quiet. Too quiet. For six years, there’d always been Carol’s shrill laugh or Ethan’s loud music echoing down the halls, and now the silence felt heavy, like it was pressing in on my chest.
I walked back to the study, the carpet still stained with champagne, the transfer forms scattered across the desk. I sat in dad’s old leather chair, my hands shaking for the first time all night, and let myself breathe.
I’d won.
So why did it feel like I’d lost something too?
I pulled up the camera footage on my desktop, saving every clip to three separate encrypted drives, when something black and small caught my eye under the desk.
I leaned down, my shoulder aching, and picked it up.
A USB drive. No label. No scratches. It must have fallen out of Ethan’s pocket when he hit me, when he leaned over the desk to grab my arm.
I turned it over in my fingers, cold dread pooling in my stomach.
I was about to plug it in when my phone rang, the screen lighting up with Mr. Hale’s name—our family lawyer, the man who’d written dad’s will, who’d known me since I was five.
“Lila,” he said, his voice tight, like he’d been holding his breath. “I need to see you first thing tomorrow morning. There’s a second set of documents your father left with me. I didn’t want to mention them while Ethan and Carol were in the picture.”
My throat went dry.
Dad never kept secrets from me. Not ever.
“What kind of documents?” I asked.
“Not over the phone,” he said. “10 a.m. My office. And Lila? Bring someone with you. Just to be safe.”
He hung up before I could ask anything else.
I stared at the USB drive in my hand, then at the phone.
I got up and walked down the hall to dad’s bedroom. The sheets were still unmade from the last morning he’d been there, his favorite flannel shirt draped over the armchair, the air still smelling like his pine cologne and peppermint toothpaste.
I sat on the edge of his bed, and for the first time since the funeral, I cried.
Not for the bruise on my jaw. Not for the money they’d tried to steal.
For the fact that he was gone. That he’d had to spend his last months surrounded by people who’d only ever wanted his money. That he’d never get to see them get what they deserved.
I fell asleep there, curled up on top of his comforter, the USB drive clutched in my hand.
When I woke up, the sun was high in the sky, my neck stiff, my jaw throbbing worse than before.
I stumbled back to the study, plugged the USB drive into my desktop, and double-clicked the first file.
It was a video. Dated three days before dad died.
May you like
I pressed play.
My blood turned to ice in my veins.
