Chapter 1 - STILL UNSIGNED
My brother kicked me hard enough that I slid across our father’s hardwood floor, but the deed was still unsigned.
That was the only thing I could think about.
Not my ribs.
Not the broken glass beneath my palm.
Not Vanessa standing in black glitter heels beside the fireplace as though watching her husband’s brother beat his own sister was an inconvenience she expected someone else to clean up.
The deed.
Six pages.
My name printed beneath a blank signature line.
Damian stood over me with Dad’s old wooden baseball bat in both hands.
“Sign it,” he said, “or die.”
My breath caught painfully.
I crawled toward the scattered papers.
Not because I intended to sign.
Because the pen lay beside them, and I wanted it farther away from him.
Vanessa laughed.
“Finish her, Damian.”
I looked at my sister-in-law.
That sentence would stay with me longer than the bruises.
Damian grabbed my shoulder and yanked me backward.
My white floral dress twisted beneath me.
“Your signature,” he hissed. “That’s all I need.”
I shoved the pen with my fingertips.
It rolled under the coffee table.
Damian swore.
Then the front door exploded inward.
Wood splintered.
Two uniformed officers entered.
Behind them stood Marcus Hale, Dad’s estate attorney, still carrying the charcoal briefcase he was supposed to bring to our scheduled inventory meeting.
Damian froze.
For half a second, nobody understood how much had changed.
Then one officer shouted for him to drop the bat.
Damian’s hands loosened.
I swept the deed farther away.
“Still unsigned, bastard.”
The bat hit the floor.
The officers moved in.
Vanessa backed toward the dining room.
Marcus stepped across the broken threshold.
He looked at me.
Then the deed.
Then Damian.
“Damian,” he said quietly, “step away.”
The officers seized my brother’s arms.
I expected relief.
Instead Damian looked toward Marcus’s briefcase.
Panic replaced fury.
“No.”
Marcus opened the case.
He removed a small silver digital recorder.
Vanessa went completely still.
Damian stared at it.
“You can’t use that.”
Marcus did not answer.
He had carried the recorder because Dad had instructed him months earlier to create a clean record of every contentious estate meeting involving the house.
Everyone had been told.
Everyone had agreed.
Damian had simply forgotten how much he had said.
Marcus looked at the police.
Then at me.
“This contains the last estate meeting your brother attended.”
Damian lunged against the officers.
“Shut it off!”
The recorder was not playing.
That made his reaction worse.
I pressed one hand against my ribs.
“What’s on it?”
Marcus looked at Damian.
My brother closed his eyes.
And I suddenly understood something.
The beating had not started because Damian wanted Dad’s house.
It had started because he needed my signature before something else happened.
Something with a deadline.
May you like
Something Marcus had already heard him admit.
And whatever it was, Vanessa was even more afraid of that recorder than Damian.
