“Your property? How sweet of you to think that you can keep this fortune all for yourself while the rest of us just sit back and watch.”
“My father built every inch of this house and planted every tree with his own hands, so this isn’t just about money to me.”
“Wake up, because everything in this world is about money,” she snapped back at me. “Tomorrow you are going to learn that lesson the hard way.”
She turned to leave, but before she passed through the garden gate, she delivered one final, cruel blow.
“You really should start packing, because Simon and I are going to remodel the second we move in. We are going to start by ripping out these old-fashioned rosebushes since everything here needs a more modern look.”
Her heels clicked away down the stone path until she disappeared from sight. I looked down at the white flowers and realized I had accidentally crushed several delicate petals with my muddy hand.
I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I knew by heart.
“Attorney Brenda, it’s me,” I said the moment she picked up the call. “Misty just came here to threaten me.”
Her professional tone shifted instantly to one of deep concern.
“What exactly did she say to you, Cassandra?”
“She said exactly what we were afraid of, so I need to know if you can come over right now.”
“I am on my way,” she replied firmly, “and you shouldn’t worry because your father thought much further ahead than any of them.”
After I hung up, I noticed something caught under the leaves of a rosebush. It was a small envelope, damp with the morning dew and covered in my father’s unmistakable handwriting.
It was addressed directly to me, and I picked it up with trembling hands. I felt as if the paper weighed more than it should, as if it held a final, decisive move in a game I didn’t know we were playing.
Part 2
Attorney Brenda arrived twenty minutes later carrying her briefcase and a bottle of wine. She had been my father’s legal counsel for decades, but she was also a dear friend who had known me since I was a child.
We locked ourselves in the study, which still smelled of the mild tobacco and old wood that always reminded me of my father. I sat in his large leather armchair while still clutching the unopened envelope in my hand.
“You didn’t want to open that alone, did you?” Brenda asked gently.
I shook my head because I was terrified of what Misty had hinted about my brother Jesse.
“Your father left very specific instructions, and some things were meant to be discovered only at the right time.”
I looked up at her with confusion.
“What is that supposed to mean, Brenda?”
“Go ahead and open the envelope, Cassandra.”
I broke the wax seal and found a letter along with a small brass key tucked inside.
“My dear Cassandra,” I read aloud, hearing my father’s gravelly voice in my mind. “If you are reading this, it means someone has already made a move for the inheritance.”
The letter continued, “Knowing how people are, I bet it was Misty, a woman I never liked because she had the smile of a magazine and the soul of a debt collector.”
Brenda let out a small laugh as I continued reading the rest of the message.
“The key opens the bottom drawer of my desk, where you will find exactly what you need to defend what is rightfully yours. Remember what I taught you about chess: sometimes you have to let a pawn advance just to protect the queen.”
I looked at Brenda and asked if she had been in on this the whole time.
“I helped him prepare everything six months ago when he realized how his illness would eventually end.”
I inserted the brass key into the desk drawer and it opened with a satisfying click. Inside was a thick manila envelope and a small black USB drive that made my heart pound against my ribs.
“Before you look at those, you need to know that your father added a codicil to his will just three days before he passed.”
“A codicil? What does that change?”
“It is a legal amendment,” she explained, “and believe me when I say it changes everything about tomorrow.”
I opened the manila envelope and watched as photographs, bank statements, and printed emails spilled across the desk. One photo showed Misty in a dark parking lot handing a thick envelope to a man I didn’t recognize.
Another photo showed Simon entering a law office that definitely didn’t belong to Brenda. There were also deposit slips marked with yellow highlighter and chains of emails with content that made my blood run cold.
“Did my father actually investigate them himself?”
“He hired a private investigator the day after you told him about the infidelity,” Brenda replied. “He didn’t leave a single stone unturned.”
I picked up the USB drive and asked what was on it.
“That is a video of Misty trying to bribe your father’s hospice nurse to leak information about the will just two days before he died.”
I sat there in total shock as Brenda explained that the nurse had alerted the authorities immediately. She then handed me another photograph of my brother, Jesse, sitting with Misty at an elegant restaurant.
“Look at the next photo in the stack,” Brenda urged me.
The second photo showed Jesse leaving that same restaurant with a distraught expression and a check clutched in his hand.
“Misty offered him ten million dollars to testify that your father was mentally unfit when he changed his will.”
“But she told me that Jesse was helping her take the estate.”
“Your brother has been pretending to go along with them just to make them feel safe,” she revealed. “He gave them just enough rope to hang themselves.”
I was still trying to process the betrayal when Brenda delivered the most shocking detail of the plan.
“Tomorrow at the reading, it will appear as though Misty and Simon are receiving a massive portion of the inheritance.”
I stood up abruptly, feeling a surge of panic.
“Why would he do that after everything they did?”
“Let me finish, because the moment they accept that inheritance, the codicil is officially activated. Their acceptance triggers a mandatory investigation that allows all this evidence to be presented to the prosecution.”
