Chapter 1 - The Marble Floor
By the time I stepped through the front door of my father’s Belle Meade mansion, he was already on the floor.
Richard Hale, sixty-seven years old, in a navy suit and a half-unbuttoned white shirt, was dragging himself across the marble on one good leg and one weak one, his bandaged right wrist slipping against spilled tea.
The cup lay shattered beside him.
Vivian stood over him in a fitted royal-blue dress and red heels, one foot planted near his upper shoulder, smiling as if this were all a tedious household inconvenience.
Marcus stood a few feet away in a navy suit, touching the gold watch on his wrist.
My father’s watch.
“Crawl faster, Richard,” Vivian said. “Or you get no medicine.”
My suitcase nearly fell from my hand.
For one second, nobody moved.
Then my father tried to lift himself. Vivian shifted her heel and pushed down harder. His arm buckled and the broken cup rattled across the floor.
“Useless old man.”
I dropped the suitcase handle and crossed the foyer so fast Marcus barely had time to turn.
“Take your foot off him.”
My voice came out colder than I felt.
Vivian’s face emptied, then tightened. “Isabella.”
“Move.”
She lifted her foot, not because she was frightened of me, but because she had not expected me home that morning.
Marcus recovered first.
“You don’t get to storm in here like—”
“Take off that watch.”
He glanced at his wrist and smirked. “Richard gave it to me.”
I ignored him and crouched beside my father.
He smelled faintly of antiseptic and sweat.
His beard had grown unevenly.
“Dad.”
His eyes found mine. Shame moved across his face faster than relief.
“Bella.”
Nobody had called me that in this house for three years.
I helped him sit back against the wall.
Vivian straightened her dress. “If you’re done with the theatrics, your father spilled his tea and refused to take his medication.”
“He was crawling for it.”
“He likes to dramatize when he doesn’t get his way.”
Marcus folded his arms. “You don’t know what’s been going on here.”
“No,” I said. “But I know enough.”
I looked toward the open door behind me.
Paige Mercer was already climbing the front steps with a leather briefcase in one hand.
She had been my father’s outside counsel once, then mine, then neither after I left the family business. Yesterday she had become my lawyer again.
Vivian saw her and went still.
Marcus’s smirk disappeared.
I turned back to my father.
“I told you I’d come prepared.”
He swallowed hard.
Vivian’s voice sharpened. “Prepared for what?”
I picked up my suitcase, set it beside me, and opened it just enough for the thick legal folder inside to show.
The embossed seal on the front was visible for only a second.
It was enough.
Vivian knew what she was looking at.
Marcus looked from the folder to her face and lost color.
My father stopped breathing for half a beat.
I didn’t pull the papers out.
May you like
Not yet.
I only looked at Vivian and said, “That depends on whether either of you tells the truth before I make him sign.”
