“My son is sleeping.”
“Our blood,” Derek snapped.
I smiled faintly. “Strange. Blood didn’t seem very important twelve days ago.”
Vivian’s nostrils flared. “You were hysterical. We were in sh0ck.”
“You told me to call a taxi.”
“You survived.”
“So did the recording.”
Silence dropped like a weight.
Derek’s gaze flicked toward the camera outside, then to my lawyer.
Vivian recovered first. She always did. “You think a camera intimidates us? Samuel’s estate belongs to family.”
I tilted my head. “I am family.”
“You were his wife for three years,” she said coldly. “I raised him.”
“And yet he trusted me.”
My lawyer, Mara Voss, opened the first folder. She didn’t stand. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to.
“Samuel Hale revised his will six weeks before his death,” Mara said. “Everything is placed in a protected trust for Claire and the child. Vivian Hale receives nothing. Derek Hale receives nothing.”
Derek let out a harsh laugh. “That’s impossible.”
Vivian’s face hardened. “Samuel would never cut off his own mother.”
“He did,” I said. “After he discovered the accounts.”
There it was.
A flicker.
Not grief. Not confusion.
Fear.
Months before the accident, Samuel had noticed money slipping out of his business. Small transfers disguised as vendor payments, loans approved under his name. He came home late one night, pale and furious, carrying copies in a blue folder.
“Derek’s stealing from me,” he said.
