Blood was dripping from my mouth onto the cold linoleum floor of the gynecologist’s waiting room.

You’d be surprised how bright it looks when it hits beige tile—startlingly red, like something out of a crime scene show, not real life.

My stepbrother Will stood over me, his fist still clenched. His voice bounced off the walls as other patients scrambled away in horror.

“YOU BETTER START SIGNING,” he screamed, shoving a stack of legal papers in my face, “or I’ll make sure you never step foot in Dad’s house again!”

The stitches from my emergency surgery three days earlier felt like they were ripping open as I tried to push myself upright. Pain lanced through my abdomen—white-hot, blinding.

The nurse behind the front desk was already dialing 911, her hands shaking as badly as mine. A woman with a toddler scooped her kid into her arms and fled toward the exit. Another woman, pale and pregnant, pressed herself against the far wall, eyes wide.

Will didn’t notice any of it.

Will never noticed anything that didn’t benefit Will.

I’m Donna Underwood. I’m 32 years old.

Two weeks ago, I had a future.

A baby on the way. A father who loved me. A place I called home.

Now I was bleeding on a medical office floor while my stepbrother tried to bully me into signing away everything my father had left me.

And the worst part was, I had no idea just how deep their betrayal went.

Not yet.

Two Weeks Earlier

Dad’s funeral was on a Thursday.

The sky was that heavy, gray kind of overcast that makes everything look like it’s under a dirty sheet. Fitting, I guess.

Underwood Construction had rented out the largest funeral home in our small Pennsylvania town. Half the county showed up. Dad had built their houses, their shops, sponsored their kids’ little league teams. He’d been more than “Douglas Underwood, business owner.” He’d been “Doug, the guy who shows up with a toolbox and a checkbook.”

Everyone said the same sort of thing.

“He was a good man.”

“He’d give you the shirt off his back.”

“I don’t know what this town’s going to do without him.”

I stood in a black dress that felt like a costume, listening, nodding, thanking people. The words blurred together.

Then I’d go home, step into his kitchen, and forget for a second he wasn’t going to walk through the door smelling like sawdust and coffee.

Grief is weird like that. It doesn’t move in a straight line. It loops.

The miscarriage happened three days after the funeral.

I woke up with cramps and told myself it was stress. Then the blood started and didn’t stop. The ER, the bright lights, the doctor’s tight face, the sound of the fetal Doppler picking up nothing.

“Miss Underwood, I’m so sorry.”

Fourteen weeks of hope. Three years of trying.

Gone in a night.

The D & C was “simple,” they said. “Routine.” The kind of surgery they do every day. But there’s nothing routine about waking up empty and bloody and realizing you will leave the hospital with nothing in your hands.

People kept telling me I was “lucky to be alive.”

Lucky.

My baby was gone.

My father was gone.

Lucky.

I stayed at Dad’s house after the surgery, partly because my tiny apartment over in Harrisburg felt too empty and partly because I didn’t know how to leave the last place that still smelled like him.

I thought I’d have time to grieve. To heal. To figure out what came next.

Instead, three days after I got home from the hospital, a moving truck showed up in the driveway.

“Sign These Or Get Out”

They didn’t knock.

Will just used his own key and walked in like he owned the place.

Veronica trailed behind him, all sleek blonde hair and faux concern. My stepmother. Thirty years younger than Dad. The woman he’d married five years ago after meeting her at some charity gala.

“Donna, sweetheart,” she cooed, rushing toward me with open arms and a hint of too-strong perfume. “We heard about the baby. Such a tragedy.”

Her mouth said “tragedy.” Her eyes were already scanning the living room: the antique clock on the mantel, the framed oil painting of my grandmother, Dad’s old gun cabinet. She wasn’t seeing memories. She was seeing dollar signs.

Will didn’t bother with niceties.

He set a thick stack of papers on the kitchen island—the same island where Dad used to flip pancakes every Sunday—and shoved them toward me.

“Sign these,” he said.

My stitches pulled when I turned to stare at him. I was still in sweatpants and one of Dad’s old flannel shirts, hair in a messy knot, body sore and empty.

“Sign what?” I asked.

“The settlement,” he said. “Dad left everything to Mom and me. The company, the house, the accounts. You get ten grand if you sign today. Tomorrow it’s five. After that, nothing.”

I blinked.

“Dad would never do that,” I said.

Will snorted.

“He did. This is the real will. Signed two weeks before he died.”

Two weeks before he died I’d been taking him to cardiology appointments, arguing with him about cutting back his hours at the office, watching him struggle to catch his breath walking from the car to the front door.

Two weeks before he died, I’d been pregnant, and he’d been planning nursery paint colors with me.

“You were too busy with your pregnancy drama to notice,” Will added. “He finally got sick of your attitude.”

Pregnancy drama.

He said it like I’d been staging some performance instead of fighting for a wanted life.

I thought about the conversations Dad and I had had about his will.

He’d never kept me in the dark about that stuff.

“Everything splits equal between you and the employees’ pension fund, Donna,” he’d said after his first heart attack. “Will and Veronica get the Florida house and a hundred thousand each. Fair’s fair.”

Now Will was standing in front of me, telling me Dad had disinherited me on his deathbed?

No.

“I want to see the real will,” I said. “From Dad’s actual lawyer. Not whatever you’re waving at me.”

His face flushed a familiar ugly purple.

The same shade I’d seen when he’d gotten caught stealing from Dad’s wallet at sixteen. When a teacher had called home about him cheating on an exam. When Dad had refused to bail him out the first time he got in over his head with gambling.

“This is real,” he snarled. “You think Dad would leave his company to you? You can barely file your own taxes.”

“That’s why he had Margaret and a whole accounting team,” I shot back. “And you were never in the office unless it was to raid the petty cash.”

Veronica slid between us like oil.

“Donna, honey,” she said. “We don’t want any… unpleasantness. We’re just trying to honor your father’s wishes. You get ten thousand. That’s more than generous, considering how selfish you’ve been.”

“Selfish?” I repeated.

“For getting pregnant at a time like this,” she said. “You put so much stress on Doug’s heart—”

I laughed.

I couldn’t help it.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to need some time. To review this. With a lawyer.”

“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” Will said. “After that, the offer goes down.”

He tapped the papers with one thick finger.

“If you’re not gonna start signing, you’d better start packing,” he added.

They left in a flurry of offended righteousness.

I sank onto a stool and stared at the stack of papers.

The letters blurred.

My abdomen throbbed. My head felt like it was floating several inches above my neck.

I stood, carefully, and put the papers in a drawer.

Let them wait.

Tomorrow, I had a follow-up appointment with my gynecologist.

I’d call a lawyer after that.

I thought I had time.

I had no idea Will would show up there.

The Slap

The gynecologist’s office waiting room had always been a place of muted anxiety and bad magazines. Women sat quietly, scrolling on their phones, glancing up at the door every time a nurse called a name.

That morning, I sat there with Margie at my side.

Margie wasn’t related to me by blood, but she might as well have been. Seventy-three years old, retired forensic accountant, sharp-minded and sharp-tongued. She’d done the books for Underwood Construction for fifteen years before retiring—Dad’s friend long before she was mine.

She’d come with me because “nobody should go to a miscarriage follow-up alone.”

We were discussing whether the magazine rack had accidentally been stuck in a time warp (all the covers were from 2018) when the waiting room door slammed open.

Will.

“How the hell did he find us?” Margie muttered.

Veronica must’ve been going through my phone. She’d been staying at the house part-time “to help after the funeral,” which apparently included snooping through my messages while I slept.

Will marched across the room, waving the stack of papers over his head.

“Time’s up,” he announced loudly. “YOU BETTER START SIGNING, Donna.”

Every head in the room snapped up.

“Get out,” I hissed. “This is a medical office.”

He ignored me.

“You got a good deal,” he said, voice booming. “Ten thousand dollars for doing nothing. You think anyone else would be so generous?”

“Sir?” The nurse behind the desk stood. “You need to lower your voice. We have patients—”

“Stay out of this,” he snapped at her. Then, to me: “Sign now or get out of Dad’s house today.”

I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “I’m not signing anything without a lawyer.”

His face did that purple thing again.

“I told you what would happen,” he said.

Then he slapped me.

It wasn’t a shove. It wasn’t a tap.

His hand cracked across my face so hard my ears rang. The room spun. My stomach lurched. The floor rushed up toward me and caught me without any softness at all.

My stitches screamed.

Blood filled my mouth. Copper and salt.

“Oh my God!” someone screamed.

“Call 911!” the nurse cried.

Margie was at my side in an instant, her small hands surprisingly strong as she tried to help me roll onto my side so I wouldn’t choke.

“Sir, you need to step away from her,” another nurse said, voice shaking.

Will loomed over me, fist still clenched, chest heaving.

“If you think you’re too good for ten thousand,” he snarled, “you get nothing. You’ll be out on your ass by tonight.”

“Sir, step back!” the nurse repeated. “Now or I’m calling security!”

He finally took a step back, hands up in mock innocence.

“I was just trying to talk to my sister,” he said. “She’s being unreasonable.”

“Step. Back,” the nurse said again.

He did, barely.

The police arrived fast—sirens wailing, boots thudding across linoleum.

They took one look at me on the floor, my split lip, my shaking hands, and another look at Will, breathing hard, holding legal papers, and the coworkers around us mouthing “He hit her” and “He slapped her,” and that was that.

He tried his “grieving son” routine.

“I just lost my father,” he said. “She’s making everything so difficult. You know how families get. It was an accident.”

It’s hard to sell “accident” when there’s a clear handprint blossoming on the side of someone’s face.

And multiple witnesses.

The officers cuffed him and led him out.

Veronica bailed him out within two hours.

Because of course she did.

By the time Margie drove me back to Dad’s house that evening—my face aching, my stomach feeling like someone had used it as a punching bag, my spirit somewhere between numb and furious—the locks on the house had been changed.

My key didn’t work.

My heart sank in a slow, sick way.

“They can’t do that,” Margie said.

“Oh, they can,” I said. “At least until probate.”

We walked around to the front yard.

My belongings were scattered across the lawn like someone had shaken the house upside down and let everything fall out.

Clothes. Books. Kitchenware.

Photo albums, lying open in the grass, pages already warping from the neighbor’s sprinklers.

The jewelry box Dad had given my mother on their tenth anniversary sat smashed on the driveway, shards of wood and velvet and scattered pearls shining like tears in the fading light.

I sank to my knees.

Margie lowered herself down beside me.

“This isn’t right,” she kept muttering. “This isn’t right, honey. Your daddy would never do this to you.”

She was right.

He wouldn’t.

He hadn’t.

Will had.

And Veronica had gladly helped.

Mrs. Patterson from next door edged toward us, wringing her hands.

“Donna, dear,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to say anything at the funeral, but… your father was very upset the week before he passed. He came over to borrow my phone once. Said he didn’t trust his own anymore. Said… someone was listening.”

Listening?

To Dad?

“Thank you, Mrs. Patterson,” I said numbly.

Margie put a hand on my shoulder.

“I’ve known your father twenty years,” she said. “He was meticulous. Careful. He did not ‘forget’ you when he wrote his will. Something’s wrong here. We’re going to fix it.”

“How?” I asked.

She straightened, her joints cracking.

“First,” she said, “we get you somewhere safe. Then… I do what I do best.”

She used to say that a lot back when she worked at Underwood Construction.

“I find what people think they’ve hidden.”

“Stop Digging Or Next Time We Come In”

Sleeping on a 73-year-old woman’s couch while recovering from surgery wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined for my thirties.

But there I was.

Margie’s living room was cozy, filled with mismatched quilts and pictures of grandchildren and crocheted doilies. A world away from the sleek marble and glass Veronica preferred.

My face throbbed. My stitches pulled. My heart felt like someone had reached in and squeezed.

Around three in the morning, I woke to the sound of breaking glass.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered.

Margie was already sitting up, eyes sharp.

She slipped her hand into the nightstand and pulled out something that gleamed.

A baseball bat.

“You think I’m old and defenseless?” she muttered. “Please.”

Another crash from the direction of the kitchen.

Margie grabbed her phone with her free hand, dialed 911.

“We’ll be there in five minutes,” the operator said.

We stood behind her bedroom door, bat at the ready, hearts pounding.

By the time the police arrived, whoever it was had gone.

They’d left a parting gift: spray paint across Margie’s garage door.

STOP DIGGING OR NEXT TIME WE COME IN.

Will didn’t even bother to pretend surprise when he showed up the next morning.

He leaned against Margie’s doorframe like he owned that, too.

“Heard you had some trouble last night,” he said. “Neighborhood’s getting dangerous. Maybe you should move somewhere safer. Like… another state.”

Margie squared her shoulders.

“William Henderson,” she said, using his full name like a scolding mother. “I’ve known you since you were sixteen and stealing from your mother’s purse. You don’t scare me. Now get off my property before I show you what this old lady keeps in her purse.”

She patted her handbag.

Will’s eyes flicked to it.

He actually took a step back.

“I’m just trying to look out for family,” he said stiffly.

“Get off my porch,” she replied.

He did, muttering something under his breath about “ungrateful old bats.”

As his car pulled away, Margie turned to me.

“Time to stop playing defense,” she said. “Time to see what Will’s been up to, for real.”

She grabbed her laptop.

“I did the books for your daddy’s company for fifteen years before I retired,” she said. “Still have my access codes. He never changed his passwords, the old fool.”

She shot me a quick look.

“Bless him,” she added. “But also, bless him for making this easier.”

Following the Money

If Will’s face turning purple was his biggest tell, his biggest weakness had always been greed.

He spent money like other people breathed. New cars, new toys, new schemes. He’d always had an excuse. He’d always had his mother to bail him out. Then Dad.

Or so I’d thought.

Margie pulled up Underwood Construction’s accounts on her screen. Rows and columns of numbers scrolled past.

At first glance, everything looked normal.

Then Margie started highlighting.

“This vendor here?” she said, pointing. “Kline Supplies? They don’t exist. I checked when your father had me look at an odd invoice two years ago. Will created a shell corporation, billed the company, then transferred the money to his own account.”

She clicked through lines.

“And this one?” she said. “Ridgeway Consulting. Same deal. No real business, just a mailbox and a bank routing number that goes to a personal account.”

“How much?” I asked, my voice thin.

“In the last five years?” she said, tapping away. “Around $800,000. In the last year alone? Nearly $500,000.”

My stomach rolled.

“He’s been stealing from Dad for years,” I whispered.

“Not just from your father,” Margie said. “From the employees, too.”

She brought up the pension fund ledger. There were withdrawals there, too. Small ones at first. Then bigger. Then huge chunks.

“That’s the employees’ retirement money,” I said.

“Not if Will has his way,” she said.

She frowned at her screen.

“These withdrawals here,” she said, pointing to a cluster from six months ago. “They get bigger right around the time your dad’s health started going downhill, don’t they?”

I thought back.

His first “mysterious” collapse at the office.

His second trip to the ER because he couldn’t breathe.

His third heart attack, the one he never fully came back from.

“Yeah,” I said. “About then.”

Margie took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

“I’ve seen this pattern before,” she said. “When I worked cases with forensic teams. Money goes missing. Sick older person gets sicker. The person in control of their medication gets richer.”

Cold crept up my spine.

“No,” I whispered.

She opened a fresh tab.

We pulled up Dad’s patient portal.

Med changes. Dosages. Dates.

Three different heart medications changed three times in six months.

Each time, he seemed to get worse, not better.

“What if someone was messing with his pills?” Margie asked quietly.

My brain flashed back to the last coherent conversation I’d had with Dad in the hospital.

He’d grabbed my wrist with surprising strength.

“Check the basement safe, Donna,” he’d rasped. “Behind the water heater. Your mother’s birthday.”

I’d thought it was the morphine talking. The fever. The confusion.

“I will, Dad,” I’d said, smoothing his hair.

Then the nurse had come in. The monitor had started beeping. They’d ushered me out.

He’d never woken up again.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“We need to get in that house,” Margie said.

“They changed the locks,” I said.

She smirked.

“Locks on the doors,” she said. “But I seem to recall a certain teenage girl used to sneak in and out through a certain basement window that your daddy never bothered to fix…”

The Basement

If anyone had told me I’d be sneaking into my childhood home with a 73-year-old accomplice at two in the morning, I’d have said they were crazy.

But there we were.

Dressed in black like two very short, very unimpressive ninjas, we crept across Dad’s backyard. The grass felt different without his boots walking through it every day, checking the fence, the garden.

“Can you believe I’m breaking and entering at my age?” Margie whispered.

“Technically,” I whispered back, prying up the old, loose basement window, “it’s still my house until probate finishes. So we’re not breaking into their house. We’re breaking back into mine.”

The window gave with a familiar creak.

I slid through first, landing on the cool concrete floor.

The basement smelled like damp concrete, sawdust, and Old Spice. Tools hung neatly on the pegboard like Dad had arranged them last week instead of months ago.

I flipped on the bare bulb, shielding the light.

“Water heater’s over there,” I whispered when Margie slid in behind me.

It stood in the corner, squat and white.

Behind it, the wall looked solid.

“Your dad really did teach you nothing about hiding things,” Margie muttered, running her fingers along the drywall. “Men always think the most obvious place is the clever one.”

She pressed one particular panel. It gave slightly.

“Aha.”

The panel slid aside, revealing a small wall safe.

Four-number combination.

“Your mother’s birthday,” I whispered.

Mom had been born on June 14th.

I entered 0614, then her birth year. Nothing.

I frowned.

“Try just the day and month,” Margie suggested.

The safe clicked.

Inside were three things.

A thick envelope labeled WILL – REAL.

A bulging folder labeled FORENSIC AUDIT – UNDERWOOD CONSTRUCTION.

And another envelope. On the front, in Dad’s shaky handwriting: My dear Donna.

My hands trembled as I opened it.

My dear Donna,

If you’re reading this, then my suspicions were correct and I didn’t make it to tell you in person.

I’ve been feeling worse—not better—since Will started taking over my pills. He insisted on “helping” after my last heart attack. Said I was mixing them up. I let him. Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I didn’t want to believe what I already knew.

I’ve been documenting everything I can. The company audit is in this safe. Will doesn’t know I hired an outside firm. He thinks he’s smarter than he is.

I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier. He’s been listening to my calls. Checking my messages. He doesn’t know about this safe. He doesn’t remember your mother’s birthday.

Trust Margie. She’s sharper than both of us put together. Trust Gary Garrison. He’s still the best lawyer I know.

Don’t let them win, Donna. You are stronger than you think.

All my love,
Dad

My vision blurred.

I wiped my eyes and opened the will envelope.

The first page listed Dad’s name, the date—one month before he died—and a familiar law firm letterhead.

Everything split exactly as he’d always said.

Half to me.

Half to the employee pension fund.

The Florida house plus a hundred thousand each to Will and Veronica.

Nowhere did it mention giving Will the entire company.

Nowhere did it mention ten thousand dollars to “the ungrateful daughter.”

“Your father wasn’t senile,” Margie said quietly. “He was scared. And he was trying to protect you from beyond the grave.”

I opened the forensic audit folder.

Spread across the workbench, it showed the same things Margie had already found—shell companies, fake invoices, ghost employees—but in professional language with charts and summaries.

At the back was a summary page.

“Preliminary findings suggest embezzlement exceeding $1.2 million over a five-year period by William Henderson, CFO.”

CFO.

Chief Financial Officer.

Dad had given him that title as a way to force him to grow up.

Instead, Will had used it as a license to steal.

Another folder lay in the bottom of the safe. Older. Filled with yellowed newspaper clippings.

Three obituaries.

Three different men in three different states.

Each had died of “heart-related complications” within three years of marrying the same woman.

A woman named Veronica.

“She’s done this before,” Margie breathed.

Each obituary had a note in Dad’s handwriting.

“Insurance payout: 500k.”

“Left her house, business.”

“Suspected but never charged.”

My stomach turned.

Dad had known what she was.

He’d just… fallen in love anyway.

“We need to get this out of here,” Margie said. “If they figure out you’ve found it, they’ll destroy it.”

“We need backup,” I said. “We need Gary. And the cops.”

“And the feds,” Margie added. “This isn’t just family drama anymore. This is criminal.”

We photographed every page with our phones, then carefully put everything back in the safe. Margie insisted.

“Let them think they’ve still got you cornered,” she said. “The more comfortable they feel, the more likely they are to make a mistake.”

On our way out, something caught her eye—the faint glow of a monitor in Dad’s office upstairs.

“His computer might still be logged in,” she said.

The house was dark and eerily quiet.

Upstairs, the office door was half open.

Dad’s desk sat in its usual place. Family photos. The mug that said #1 DAD.

Will’s laptop sat open beside Dad’s.

Email still up.

Margie slid into the chair like she was putting on an old pair of jeans.

“Let’s see what Mr. Henderson’s been sending,” she murmured.

What we found made my blood run cold.

Emails between Will and Veronica.

From: Will
To: Veronica

“Old man took his pills like clockwork. Double dose in his coffee this morning. Transfer another 50K before the audit hits.”

From: Veronica
To: Will

“Make sure he doesn’t notice the changes in the bottles. We can’t afford a scare yet. Donna’s still around too much.”

From: Will
To: Veronica

“Donna’s getting suspicious. If she doesn’t sign, we’ll have to handle her like we discussed.”

“Handle” me.

The same way they’d “handled” Dad.

I copied everything onto a flash drive Margie pulled from her purse.

“Old forensic habit,” she said, patting my arm when she saw my expression. “Always carry storage.”

When we finally crawled back out the basement window and into the cool night air, my body felt like it belonged to someone else.

I’d lost my baby.

I’d lost my father.

Now I knew I’d nearly lost my life, too.

And they thought they’d gotten away with it.

They were wrong.

Gary and Riley

Gary Garrison’s office sat above the old hardware store downtown.

He’d been Dad’s lawyer since before I was born. Did his wills, his contracts, bailed him out of a zoning dispute once and beat a competitor’s frivolous lawsuit into the ground.

He was in his early seventies now. Still sharp. Still cranky.

“Donna, kiddo,” he said when Margie and I walked in. “You look terrible.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You’re not looking so hot yourself.”

He barked a laugh.

“That’s better,” he said. “Now, tell me everything.”

We spread the safe’s treasures across his desk.

He read Dad’s letter, the real will, the forensic audit, the clippings, the printed emails from Will’s computer.

With each page, his face got redder.

“I knew it,” he said finally, slamming his hand on the desk so hard his coffee mug rattled. “Your father came to me six weeks ago, scared out of his mind. Said Will was up to something. Said he didn’t feel right. I told him to document everything. I should’ve… I should have done more.”

“He did what he could,” I said. “He left me enough to take them down. Now we need help.”

Gary nodded.

“I’ve got friends,” he said. “Federal prosecutors. IRS. A detective or two who still answer my calls.”

He picked up his phone.

Within an hour, a woman walked into the office who looked like she’d seen every kind of human mess.

Detective Kara Riley. Mid-forties. Brown hair pulled back severely. Eyes sharp. Badge clipped to her belt.

“Mr. Garrison says you’ve got a situation,” she said, sitting and flipping open a notebook.

“Call it a family problem with federal implications,” Gary said. “Donna, this is Detective Riley.”

She shook my hand firmly.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “Both of them.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She read quickly, lips tightening.

“We’ve had our eye on Veronica for years,” she said when she got to the clippings. “Husband number three’s insurance company hired a PI. Pattern looked bad, but nothing stuck. No firm evidence. She moves states. Changes her name just enough. Waits. Rinse and repeat.”

She tapped Dad’s medical records.

“Now we’ve got timing and motive on top of the financials,” she said. “We’ll need to get the medication tested. If they tampered with his pills, we’ll find it.”

They did.

The lab report came back a week later.

Dad’s digoxin—the heart medication—contained three times the prescribed dose.

Given daily over months, it would cause a slow decline that looked like heart failure.

Exactly what had “killed” him.

“We can move on them now,” Riley said. “But I want more. I want their intent on record. I want them talking. I want a jury to hear them brag.”

“So how do we get that?” I asked.

Gary smiled, slow and wolfish.

“By giving Will what he wants,” he said. “Or at least letting him think he’s about to get it.”

Playing The Victim

If there’s one thing Will loved more than money, it was thinking he was smarter than everyone else.

I knew that. So did Dad. So did Margie. So did every teacher he’d ever lied to.

So we decided to use it.

Step one: I called Will.

Or rather, I called, and he answered on the third ring.

“What the hell do you want?” he snapped.

“I wanted to talk,” I said, injecting as much tremor into my voice as I could without going over the top. The tears were real, at least. “You win, Will. Okay? You win. I can’t… I can’t fight you anymore.”

On the other end of the line, silence.

Then a smug little chuckle.

“Finally came to your senses, huh?” he said.

“I just…” I sniffed. “I just want my mother’s jewelry box back. You can keep the rest. Please. That’s all I have left of her.”

He made a dismissive noise.

“That old thing? It broke when we tossed your crap out,” he said. “You should’ve taken better care of it.”

That hurt in a way nothing else had.

But I pushed through.

“I’ll sign whatever you want,” I said. “Just… can we do it at Dad’s office? With a notary? So it’s… legal?”

He took the bait.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Ten a.m. Dad’s office. Bring whoever you want to witness. I want this done.”

After I hung up, Gary steepled his fingers.

“He wants a notary,” he said. “We’ll see what kind he brings. Riley, you get me a warrant for recording devices in that office?”

“I’m already on it,” she said.

Step two: bait the hook deeper.

I called him again that evening.

“What now?” he groaned.

“I’ve been… thinking,” I said. “Dad mentioned something before he died.”

“What kind of something?” he asked suspiciously.

“He said something about another account,” I said. “A safety deposit box at First National. Said Mom set it up before she died. Life insurance money. I don’t know. It might not be anything. But… if there’s more money… maybe you won’t need to sell the company so cheap.”

Greed practically crackled through the line.

“Another account?” he repeated. “How much?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He just said… ‘Make sure you and the employees are taken care of.’”

A lie. Sort of.

Dad had said that. Just not in regards to some mystery account.

“If we find it,” I added, “maybe we could… work out a better deal for me? Enough to… start over.”

He snorted.

“You’re in no position to negotiate,” he said. “But if you’re telling the truth, maybe I’ll throw you a bone.”

“I’m not lying,” I said. “I… I don’t want a fight, Will. I just want to be done.”

In the background of Gary’s office, Margie mouthed, “Hooked.”

Riley nodded.

“We’ll have the office wired,” she said. “You’ll wear one, too. Just keep him talking.”

“How?” I asked.

Gary smiled.

“Ask him what he thinks of Dad,” he said. “He won’t be able to resist telling you.”

“Sign Here, Here, And Here”

The next morning, walking into Dad’s office building felt like stepping into a haunted house.

Underwood Construction’s logo still hung in the lobby—blue and white, the Underwood name solid and dependable.

Dad’s employees—men and women he’d hired and trained and joked with—pretended to be busy as I walked past.

Some gave me small nods.

Others avoided my eyes.

They’d seen Will and Veronica taking over. They’d heard the rumors. They’d watched me get locked out of my own house.

And now I was walking back in.

“Remember,” Riley muttered in my earpiece as I pushed open Dad’s office door. “We’re right down the hall. We can be in there in under ten seconds if he gets physical.”

“I don’t think he’ll hit me in Dad’s office,” I whispered back, forcing a shaky laugh.

She wasn’t amused.

“People like him don’t have lines,” she said. “They have impulses.”

Dad’s office smelled like stale coffee, paper, and a faint lingering trace of his aftershave.

Will sat in Dad’s chair, feet up on the desk. He’d swapped his usual jeans and t-shirt for a suit that didn’t fit quite right. He looked like a kid dressing up in Dad’s clothes.

Tiffany perched on the corner of the desk, all tight dress and too-high heels, scrolling her phone.

“Willie Bear,” she whined. “We’re going to the dealership after this, right? You promised we’d look at the Range Rover.”

“In a minute,” he said.

His smile as he looked at me was all teeth.

“Nice of you to join us,” he said. “Thought maybe you’d bail.”

“You said ten,” I said. “It’s ten.”

Tiffany’s gaze went to my abdomen.

“So is your, like, surgery all healed up?” she asked. “Because I read online, you’re not supposed to, like, lift heavy things or whatever, and Willie Bear said you were faking, but you look pretty pale, so maybe you actually did have a miscarriage.”

“Tiffany,” Will snapped.

“What?” she said. “I’m just saying. People lie about miscarriages on TikTok all the time for sympathy.”

I stared at her.

She blinked.

“Donna,” Will said, clearing his throat. “These are the papers. Legal. All drawn up.”

A man in a cheap suit sat in the corner. He had the clammy look of someone who was always sweating and always lying.

“This is Vincent,” Will said. “He’s a notary. He’s going to witness everything.”

Vincent gave me a quick, twitchy nod.

He was exactly the type of guy I’d expect Will to bring in for “legal support.”

I sat.

“Before I sign anything,” I said, hands folded to hide their trembling, “I want to understand exactly what I’m giving up.”

Will rolled his eyes.

“You’re giving up your claim to Dad’s estate,” he said. “The house, the company, any accounts. In exchange, you get twenty thousand dollars and we never have to see each other again.”

“And the employees’ pension fund?” I asked.

“That’s none of your business,” he said.

“It was Dad’s business,” I said. “He promised—”

“He’s dead,” Will snapped. “Business changes.”

He pushed the papers toward me.

“Sign here, here, and here,” he said, stabbing at signature lines with a pen.

I didn’t pick up the pen.

“Why are you in such a hurry to sell the company?” I asked. “Dad built it over thirty years. It’s worth at least ten million.”

“I already have a buyer,” he said. “Fitzgerald Industries. Three million, cash. Close tomorrow.”

“You’re selling it for a third of what it’s worth?” I asked. “Why?”

His jaw tightened.

“Because I want this over,” he said.

“And because you owe people,” I said softly. “A lot of people.”

His eyes cut to mine.

“How do you—”

“Big Eddie?” I said. “Ring a bell? He says he’s going to break your kneecaps if you don’t pay him back.”

Will’s face went pale.

“You went through my emails,” he said.

“You went through my father’s veins,” I replied.

Tiffany looked between us, confused.

“Willie Bear?” she said. “Who’s Big Eddie? You told me your only debt was your student loans.”

Will ignored her.

“You’re stalling,” he said to me. “Sign, Donna. Or walk away with nothing.”

I picked up the pen.

My hand hovered over the line.

“Just answer one thing first,” I said. “What really happened to Dad?”

Tiffany rolled her eyes.

“He had a heart attack,” she said. “Duh. That’s what everyone says.”

I kept my eyes on Will.

“Did he?” I asked. “Or did someone help him along?”

Sweat beaded on his upper lip.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Dad’s meds tested positive for three times the prescribed dose,” I said. “Digoxin. Administered daily.”

Tiffany’s eyes widened.

“Double dose in his coffee this morning,” I added. “Ring a bell?”

Will lunged across the desk.

This time, he didn’t hit me.

He grabbed for the papers, sending them flying, pages fluttering across the floor.

“You think you’re clever?” he screamed. “You think you can trick me? You’re just like your mother. Useless and intrusive—”

The door burst open.

“Hands where we can see them!” Detective Riley shouted.

She strode in, weapon drawn, flanked by two uniformed officers and two men in FBI windbreakers.

They swept into the room with terrifying efficiency.

“William Henderson,” Riley said. “You’re under arrest for embezzlement, wire fraud, elder abuse, and the murder of Douglas Underwood.”

Tiffany screamed.

Vincent tried to bolt for the window, but an agent grabbed him by the collar mid-scramble.

“Get off me!” Will yelled, struggling as handcuffs clicked into place.

Veronica chose that moment to walk in, carrying a bottle of champagne.

“What on earth—” she began.

“Veronica Henderson,” Riley said, pivoting. “You’re under arrest for the murders of Robert Miles, Anthony Garrett, Peter Kolinsky, and Douglas Underwood.”

Veronica froze.

Then she laughed.

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “All of them died of natural causes. You can’t—”

One of the agents held up a folder.

“Funny thing about patterns,” he said. “Insurance policies. Medication records. All roads lead back to you.”

She kept smiling as they cuffed her.

Tiffany, bless her clueless heart, whirled on Will.

“You told me you were rich!” she screamed. “You told me you owned this company. You told me we were buying a yacht!”

Will tried to speak, but the agents were already hauling him toward the door.

“You said we were going to Paris!” Tiffany sobbed. “What am I supposed to tell my followers?”

“Call Netflix,” one of the agents muttered. “Pitch them a show.”

Outside, in the hallway, employees had gathered.

Tom, Dad’s foreman of twenty years, stood at the front.

When he saw Will in handcuffs, something like relief flashed across his face.

“Is it true?” he asked me quietly. “Did he… did he kill your father?”

I nodded.

Tom’s fists clenched.

“That man gave me a job when I was right out of prison,” he said. “He gave me a second chance. He paid for my daughter’s chemo when insurance wouldn’t cover it. And Will… was poisoning him.”

He took a step toward Will, but an officer held up a hand.

“He’ll see justice,” the cop said. “In court.”

“He better,” Tom growled.

He would.

On all counts.

The Trial

The trial took months.

It might as well have been years.

The prosecution built their case brick by brick.

They had Margie’s financial analysis.

They had the forensic audit.

They had the lab reports showing toxic levels of medication.

They had the emails between Will and Veronica.

They had the recording from Dad’s office, where Will had practically confessed to everything in his own words.

They had employee testimony.

And they had Dad’s letter.

Gary read it aloud in court.

When he got to the part where Dad apologized for not telling me sooner, several jurors wiped their eyes.

Will went through three defense attorneys.

Each tried a different tactic.

“It was all Veronica.”

“It was all stress.”

“It was all misunderstanding.”

None of it worked.

Will’s own ego sabotaged him.

He’d bragged too much. Written too much down. Left too many breadcrumbs.

Veronica’s lawyers tried to paint her as a grieving wife who’d had “nothing to do with” the medications.

Then the prosecution showed the jury her storage unit contents.

Rings. Watches. Photos.

Medical records, annotated in her neat hand.

Increase dose.

Stop meds.

Schedule cardiology visit after next “event.”

Husband number one’s records.

Husband number two’s.

Husband number three’s.

And my father’s.

She’d found a formula that worked for her and repeated it.

The newspapers called her a “black widow.”

She smiled in every picture.

Tiffany testified in a halter top and jeans that made the judge pinch the bridge of his nose.

“I mean, I thought it was weird when he kept talking about dosage,” she said, chewing gum. “But Willie Bear said his stepdad was dying anyway, and this just made it… faster? He said it was, like, merciful.”

“So you didn’t know he was poisoning Mr. Underwood?” the prosecutor asked.

“I mean, I guess I didn’t think about it,” she said. “We were planning our Vegas trip.”

The jurors stared at her.

Even Will’s lawyer looked embarrassed.

The Underwood Construction employees testified, too.

Margaret from accounting, hands shaking.

“He promised us that pension,” she said. “I’ve been planning my retirement around it. Will was stealing it from us while Mr. Underwood was in the hospital.”

Tom.

“He paid for my daughter’s cancer treatment,” he said. “He never asked for anything back. If I’d known Will was… doing this… I would have…”

He stopped.

Swallowed hard.

The prosecutor put a hand on his arm.

“The law will handle him,” she said.

The jury deliberated for forty-three minutes.

Guilty on all counts.

Will was sentenced to twenty-five years for the federal financial crimes and life for the murder.

Veronica got thirty years to life for multiple murders.

Vincent took a plea deal and cooperated, giving up details of other fraud schemes Will had run. He went away for five years.

When they led Will out of the courtroom, hands shackled, he tried one last time.

“Donna!” he shouted. “I’m your brother!”

I looked at him.

“No,” I said. “You stopped being my brother the first time you raised your hand to me in that waiting room.”

His face twisted.

Then he was gone.

Restoration

Justice is one thing.

Restoration is another.

The company survived.

Barely.

The employees stayed.

Margie came out of retirement long enough to help stabilize the books.

With Will gone and the embezzlement stopped, the numbers looked better.

Underwood Construction turned out to be worth closer to fifteen million.

Once word got out that the rot had been cut out, contracts came back. Old clients called.

The pension fund, which Will had been siphoning from, was restored using assets recovered from Veronica’s accounts and the frozen “profits” of the fraudulent sale that never went through.

Margaret cried when she found out she’d still be able to retire the following year.

“I thought I’d be dragging myself to work in a walker,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Your father would be so proud of you, Donna.”

Dad’s real will went through probate without a hitch.

Half of the company and its assets came to me.

The other half went into the pension fund.

Will and Veronica got nothing.

Their Florida house was seized under asset forfeiture.

Even their furniture went to auction.

Gary handed me a thick envelope one afternoon.

“Your father left instructions for one final thing,” he said.

Inside was a key and another bank address.

“Another safe deposit box?” I asked.

Gary nodded.

“He set it up years ago,” he said. “Told me it was for ‘future branches of the Underwood family tree.’”

At the second bank, in a quiet vault room, I opened box 392.

Inside were bonds.

Two million dollars’ worth.

And a letter.

To my grandchildren,

I may not live to meet you, but I wanted you to know your grandfather loved you enough to plan for you.

The world is not always kind. People are not always what they seem. But you come from strong stock. Your grandmother was the bravest woman I ever knew. Your mother is fiercer than she realizes.

Build something good with this.

And tell them about me.

—Granddad Doug

I sat there in that vault, steel walls around me, sobbing quietly into my hands.

I wasn’t pregnant.

Not anymore.

But someday…

Someday that letter would matter.

Moving Forward

Underwood Construction lives.

Dad’s name is still on the trucks.

I took over as CEO, not because I wanted the title, but because I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else treating his employees like numbers on a spreadsheet.

Turns out, I have a head for it.

Maybe genetics. Maybe growing up around blueprints and site plans.

We landed a contract to build a new wing of the local children’s hospital.

The morning they broke ground, I stood where Dad would have stood, his old hard hat on my head.

Tom squeezed my shoulder.

“He’s here,” he said.

I believed him.

As for my own life…

I didn’t expect to fall in love with the doctor who’d treated me the night of the miscarriage.

Dr. Nathan Brooks.

He’d been the one to tell me there was no heartbeat.

He’d been the one to testify in court about the injuries from Will’s slap.

He was also the one who, six months after the trial, asked me if I wanted to get coffee.

Coffee became dinner.

Dinner became movie nights and walks and the slow, terrifying process of learning to trust my body again.

“What if it happens again?” I asked him one night, staring at the ceiling.

“What if I can’t carry a baby?”

“Then we figure out another way to build a family,” he said. “Or we don’t. Either way, I’m here for you, not for what you can give me.”

We got married at the courthouse.

Just us, Margie, Gary, and Detective Riley as witnesses.

Simple. Honest. No champagne.

Margie wore a t-shirt that said Old Ladies Know Everything under her blazer.

Nathan and I stuck with coffee and lemon cake afterward.

The day I found out I was pregnant again, I drove to the cemetery.

Pulled up to Dad’s grave with a six-pack of his favorite beer and a slice of lemon cake from the diner he loved.

I sat on the grass and leaned against the headstone.

“We did it, Dad,” I said. “We got them.”

Wind rustled the leaves overhead.

“The company’s safe,” I said. “The employees have their pensions. Will and Veronica are never getting out. Margie got an award for the forensic work. Riley got a commendation and started an elder-abuse task force because of our case. Your name still means something in this town.”

I laid a hand on my still-flat stomach.

“And… I’m pregnant,” I added. “Nathan’s a good man. He reads contracts before signing. He doesn’t hit people in waiting rooms. You would’ve liked him.”

I laughed through the tears.

“They thought I was weak,” I said. “Because I was grieving. Because I was hurt. Because I didn’t fight back right away when the abuse started. They thought they could push me on my back and I’d stay there. They thought one slap would shut me up.”

I wiped my eyes.

“But when Will slapped me in that hospital,” I said, “when he stood over me screaming that I’d better start signing… I realized something. I could stay down, or I could get up. I could let them steal everything you built. Or I could use every ounce of strength you and Mom gave me and fight back.”

A breeze kicked up, carrying the faintest whiff of sawdust.

“I chose to get up,” I said.

I stood, brushed dirt from my jeans.

As I turned to leave, I glanced back at the headstone one more time.

“See you, Dad,” I said. “I’ll bring the baby next time.”

I walked back to my car, the sun warm on my back, the weight of fear lighter than it had been in a long time.

I’d lost a lot.

I’d nearly lost everything.

But that slap in the waiting room had knocked something loose in me.

Not my teeth.

My denial.

And once denial was gone, there was only truth.

Ugly. Sharp. Liberating.

They’d wanted me broken.

Instead, I became dangerous.

And I will never apologize for that.

THE END