Chapter 10 - Thomas’s Last Week
I refused to turn grief into conspiracy merely because Robert was dishonest.
Margaret agreed.
“We follow evidence.”
“Not fear.”
“Exactly.”
So we reopened the last week of Thomas’s life carefully.
Hospital records.
Phone logs.
Company calendars.
Old emails.
Thomas died at home on a Thursday night.
He had been diagnosed privately with severe cardiomyopathy months earlier.
The condition explained his death.
Nothing in the medical records suggested foul play.
That should have ended that thread.
It almost did.
Then Margaret’s investigator found an email.
Three days before Thomas died, he had scheduled a Friday meeting with an outside forensic accountant.
Subject line:
ROBERT - FINAL REVIEW.
Thomas never lived to attend it.
I stared at the screen.
“Coincidence?”
“Possibly.”
I hated that word almost as much as “not yet.”
Then came another discovery.
Robert had visited Thomas the evening he died.
I remembered.
He brought wine.
Thomas did not drink it.
They argued in the study.
I heard raised voices but stayed upstairs because Thomas later told me everything was fine.
Robert left around nine.
Thomas died shortly after midnight.
Again, none of that proved anything.
But Robert had never mentioned the meeting during the weeks after Thomas died.
At 10:22 p.m., airport security detained Kendra before she boarded her Panama flight.
Not because Margaret could order it.
Because investigators had discovered the attempted foreign transfer and provided evidence of suspected financial fraud.
Kendra immediately asked for an attorney.
Then she offered something unexpected.
A deal.
She would provide the blue folder.
In exchange, she wanted proof that I would not pursue civil damages against her beyond recovered funds.
Margaret looked at me.
“She is frightened.”
“Of prison?”
“Of Robert.”
That was different.
We agreed only to hear her proposal.
Kendra’s attorney delivered a digital copy of one page as proof.
It was Robert’s handwritten note.
D NEEDS TO BELIEVE THE GUARDIANSHIP IS HIS IDEA.
IF HE THINKS HE IS PROTECTING HIS INHERITANCE, HE WILL DO THE DIRTY WORK HIMSELF.
I stared at those words.
Daniel had betrayed me.
But Robert had studied his weaknesses and weaponized them.
Then I read the bottom of the page.
There was another line.
EVELYN IS HARDER THAN THOMAS.
DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE HER.
For some reason, that made me smile.
My brother, at least, remembered who I used to be.
The mistake he made was assuming that woman had disappeared when my legs stopped working.
The full blue folder arrived the next morning through Kendra’s attorney.
Most of it documented the guardianship conspiracy.
Then Margaret found the letter Daniel had mentioned.
It was not about causing Thomas’s death.
It was about exploiting it.
ROBERT wrote that Thomas’s death had created “the first opportunity to consolidate family control.”
Cold.
Greedy.
Disgusting.
But not murder.
I felt relief.
Then I reached the final page.
A handwritten note had been clipped behind the letter.
It was not Robert’s handwriting.
It was Thomas’s.
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, ROBERT FOUND THE WRONG COPY.
THE REAL RECORDS ARE WITH ELLEN.
I looked at Margaret.
“Who is Ellen?”
Margaret’s face went pale.
“Ellen Price.”
The name meant nothing to me.
But Margaret knew exactly who she was.
“She was Thomas’s executive assistant.”
May you like
“Was?”
“She disappeared from the company two days after his funeral.”
