Dates Garrett had appeared at the estate without me.
Questions employees remembered him asking about ownership and management.
A written account from my mother describing a conversation she had overheard between Garrett and Sienna in the hallway outside her study.
Nothing was a magical piece of evidence that solved everything.
Together, they formed something worse.
A pattern.
Garrett wanted access.
Sienna believed I had been chosen over her.
And both of them had reasons to resent the restrictions my mother had placed between them and her money.
“What do I do?” I asked.
Harrison looked at me carefully.
“First, you do nothing that tells them you know.”
That evening, I returned to the estate.
Garrett was making dinner.
He smiled when I walked in.
“There she is.”
He crossed the kitchen and kissed my forehead.
Every muscle in my body wanted to recoil.
I didn’t.
“How was Harrison?” he asked.
“Paperwork,” I said.
His knife stopped for half a second above the cutting board.
“What kind?”
There it was.
The curiosity my mother had seen before I had.
“Trust administration.
Property transfers.
Boring things.”
He relaxed.
“Let me help with that.
You shouldn’t have to carry all of it.”
I set my bag on the counter.
“I know.”
His smile returned.
That night, he slept beside me while I stared into the darkness and understood how frightening it was to hear another person breathe when you no longer knew who they were.
The next morning, Sienna arrived unannounced.
She looked terrible.
No makeup.
Hair pulled back.
Hands trembling slightly around a coffee cup.
Garrett was upstairs.
She stood across from me in the kitchen.
“I’m sorry about the will,” she said.
“For what part?”
Her eyes flicked toward the stairs.
“For how I acted.”
I watched her.
“Mom was trying to protect you.”
Her jaw tightened.
“Easy for you to say.
She gave you forty-seven million dollars.”
“She gave you a way to receive your inheritance when you’re stable enough to keep it.”
Sienna’s face changed.
“There.
That.”
“What?”
