Chapter 3
I left the hospital on crutches and went directly to attorney Maya Brooks.
Maya had handled my mother’s estate.
She knew every page of the will and every debt attached to the house.
When I showed her the financial statement, she laughed once.
It was not amusement.
It was disbelief.
“This document is fake.”
“You’re certain?”
“Your mother never borrowed money from Diane. I reviewed twelve years of her financial records.”
Maya examined the date.
“Your mother was in Colorado that day. She was recovering from surgery at your aunt’s house.”
Emma frowned.
“How would Ryan know enough to create something like this?”
“He had access to Claire’s files,” Maya said.
Ryan had spent months helping me organize my mother’s papers after she died.
At the time, I thought he was being supportive.
Now I understood he had been studying them.
Maya called the bank and stopped the loan application before it was approved.
Then she filed for an emergency restraining order against Ryan and Diane.
“We also need to freeze the business account,” she said. “If the money moves again, recovery becomes harder.”
It was already too late.
The forty-eight thousand dollars had been divided into six transfers.
Each payment went to a different company.
All six companies had been created within the previous two months.
Ryan had built a maze around my money.
Before Maya could file another motion, someone knocked on her office door.
A woman stood in the hallway.
She was in her early thirties, with red eyes and trembling hands.
I recognized her.
Megan.
Ryan’s younger sister.
Diane had told me Megan moved to Europe three years earlier.
Ryan claimed she wanted nothing to do with the family.
But Megan was standing in front of me.
“I heard what Mom did,” she said. “I need to help you.”
Maya allowed her inside.
Megan placed an old phone on the desk.
“I didn’t move to Europe. Mom threw me out.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I found out how she and Ryan made their money.”
Ryan’s business was supposed to renovate damaged homes.
According to Megan, he sometimes exaggerated repair costs and charged clients for work that was never completed.
Diane handled the paperwork.
When clients complained, she threatened them.
Megan discovered the scheme while working as Ryan’s bookkeeper.
“She wanted me to change invoices,” Megan said. “I refused.”
“So they cut you off?”
“First they destroyed my reputation. Then Mom told everyone I was addicted to drugs.”
“Were you?”
Megan’s eyes filled with tears.
“No.”
She unlocked the phone.
Dozens of messages appeared.
One was from Ryan.
Claire will never give us the house voluntarily. Mom says fear will change her mind.
Another message was dated three weeks earlier.
If she fights back, I’ll record it. We’ll say she attacked Mom and use it in the divorce.
My skin went cold.
There was more.
Diane had written: Once the loan clears, we take the money and let the bank take the house.
They had planned to leave me with debt and no home.
“Why bring this now?” Maya asked.
Megan lowered her eyes.
“Because I was afraid.”
“And now?”
“Now they’re afraid. That makes them dangerous.”
As if summoned by her words, the office lights went dark.
The computer screens died.
Maya moved toward the window.
Across the street, a man in a gray jacket stood beside an electrical box.
He looked up at us.
Then he walked away.
Megan grabbed my arm.
“That’s Carl.”
“Who is Carl?”
“Mom’s brother.”
I had met Diane’s brother once.
Ryan told me he was a retired contractor living in Florida.
“What does he want?” Emma asked.
Megan looked at the phone on the desk.
“He wants this.”
The building’s emergency lights came on.
Maya reached for the old phone.
But the desk was empty.
The phone was gone.
The office door stood open.
Someone had entered during the darkness.
Then Megan’s personal phone buzzed.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
It showed my father leaving his house.
May you like
Below it was a message from Diane.
Keep talking, and Claire loses another parent.
