“Isabella,” Dad rasped weakly. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Marcus laughed. “Even broken, the old man knows you can’t save him.”
Vivian crossed the room and air-kissed beside my cheek. Her perfume smelled expensive and rotten at the same time.
“Your father signed everything over,” she purred. “The house. His shares. The accounts. He finally realized who truly takes care of him.”
My father looked at me, shame drowning his eyes.
I slowly placed my suitcase down.
“Did he?” I asked quietly.
Vivian’s smile sharpened. “Careful, sweetheart.”
“Or did you force him to sign while he was sedated?”
The silence that followed cracked through the room.
Marcus stepped toward me immediately. “Watch your mouth.”
I looked at his wrist, at my father’s watch gleaming there, then at Vivian’s heel still touching Dad’s shoulder.
“Take your foot off him.”
Vivian laughed softly. “And if I don’t?”
I walked past her, helped my father sit upright, and wiped spilled tea from his trembling hands.
Vivian hissed, “This house belongs to me now.”
I looked around the mansion my mother helped design before cancer took her away, every wall now poisoned with fake luxury and stolen warmth.
“No,” I said softly. “This house is a crime scene.”
Marcus laughed again.
That was his first mistake.
Because I had not returned home to beg.
I came back carrying court filings in my suitcase, recordings stored on my phone, and copies of my father’s original trust documents already sent to three separate attorneys.
Vivian believed she trapped a wounded old man.
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