Chapter 8
The house was dark when I pulled up.
Only the porch light was on.
Daniel’s truck was in the driveway.
I walked up the steps.
My key still worked.
I opened the door.
The living room was a mess.
Empty beer cans.
Pizza boxes.
Papers everywhere.
Daniel was on the couch, staring at the wall.
He looked terrible.
Unshaven.
Eyes red.
Like he hadn’t slept since I left.
He looked up when I came in.
He didn’t say anything.
He just watched me walk across the room.
I sat on the coffee table in front of him.
“Harris told you,” I said.
He nodded.
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
His voice was gone.
Rasped away by whiskey and tears and too many cigarettes he didn’t even smoke.
“I called the hospital in Fort Lauderdale,” he said. “The one where Dad died. They wouldn’t give me the records. Said next of kin only. I’m next of kin. But they said Margaret already requested them and had them sealed. Said it was her ‘legal right as the surviving spouse.’”
He looked at me.
“I defended her,” he said. “For thirty-five years, I defended her. When Dad’s sister said she was no good. When my high school girlfriend said she was creepy. When you—”
He stopped.
Swallowed.
“When you told me she was hurting us,” he said, “I told you you were imagining things. I told you she was just old-fashioned. I told you blood was thicker. And all that time—she was stealing from me. She was lying to me. And maybe—”
He couldn’t say it.
He didn’t have to.
“I made a deal with her,” he said. “I was gonna trade you for the business. I was gonna let her win. Because I was scared. Because I’ve never been able to say no to her. Because some part of me still believes that if I’m just good enough, she’ll finally love me the way I need her to.”
He reached for my hand.
I let him take it.
“I’m sorry, Emily,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry. You were right about everything. And I was too weak to see it. Too weak to fight for us.”
I looked at my husband.
The boy who’d built a company from a pickup truck and a dream.
The man who’d secretly put his house in my name because he was scared he couldn’t protect me.
The human being who’d just had his entire world shattered.
And I knew.
I couldn’t leave him.
Not now.
Not when he needed me most.
But I also knew.
Things could never go back to the way they were.
“Daniel,” I said, “I love you. But if we’re gonna fix this—really fix it—things have to change. Permanently.”
“Anything,” he said. “Name it.”
“No more secrets,” I said. “No more protecting her. No more thinking you can handle her alone. From now on, we fight her together. Equal partners. Every decision. Every move. No exceptions.”
“Done.”
“And if she calls? If she texts? If she shows up here? You don’t talk to her. You don’t negotiate. You call me. You call Harris. You call the police. She is not your mother anymore. She is our enemy. And we treat her like one.”
He nodded.
“Done.”
“One more thing,” I said. “We don’t give her anything. Not the house. Not a dollar. Not the time of day. She wants a war? We give her one. And we finish it. For good.”
He squeezed my hand.
For the first time since Margaret had thrown my suitcase on the lawn, I saw it in his eyes.
Not fear.
Not guilt.
Fury.
Cold.
Clean.
Burning.
“For Dad,” he said.
“For us,” I said.
We spent the next three days planning.
Harris came over every night.
We spread everything out on the dining room table.
Bank statements.
Phone records.
The death certificate.
The insurance payout.
The gambling losses.
The OSHA reports.
Margaret had made a lot of mistakes in the last ten years.
She’d gotten arrogant.
She’d gotten careless.
And she’d left a trail a mile wide.
Harris laid out the strategy.
“We hit her with everything at once,” he said. “Civil suit for the embezzled two hundred thousand plus damages. Criminal referral to the state’s attorney for the OSHA interference—that’s a felony in Illinois, obstruction of a government investigation. We file to exhume your father’s body, Daniel. Order a full toxicology screen. And we freeze every account she’s got before she can gamble what’s left away.”
“Will it work?” Daniel asked.
Harris looked at the papers.
“Most of it? Yes. The embezzlement is ironclad. The OSHA stuff is strong. The exhumation? That’ll be harder. We need cause. Suspicious circumstances. Financial motive. We’ve got that. But judges hate digging up dead people. It’ll be a fight.”
“And what about her?” I said. “What does she do while we’re doing all this?”
Harris looked at me.
“That’s the wild card,” he said. “She’s gonna know something’s coming the second she gets served. And desperate people do desperate things. Especially people like Margaret. People who’ve never been told no their whole lives.”
He was right.
May you like
And we didn’t have to wait long to find out.
At 2:17 AM, the security alarm went off.
