Chapter 9 - The Reckoning at Midnight
The knock at the heavy front gates came at two in the morning.
The security monitor in Grandma’s private study flickered to life, showing two figures standing under the amber streetlights outside the stone wall. One was Patricia, wrapped in a disheveled trench coat, her makeup smeared across her face. Beside her stood a tall, gaunt young man with disheveled blonde hair, dark circles under his eyes, and frantic, jittery movements.
Tyler had managed to flee Las Vegas.
"Let me handle this, Nora," Grandma said, standing up and smoothing down her cardigan.
"I'm coming with you," I said firmly. I had hidden in the shadows of grief and poverty for nine long months while they stripped my life to the bone. I would not cower behind locked doors any longer.
Accompanied by Richard Vance and the estate’s private security guard, Arthur, we walked down the gravel driveway to the front gate. The iron bars separated us like the bars of a prison cell.
"Grandma! Let us in!" Tyler cried out, clutching the iron railings with white-knuckled hands. His shirt was wrinkled, smelling faintly of alcohol and stale tobacco smoke even through the night air. "You have to help me! The guys from the sportsbook found out my flight landed in Chicago! They followed me here! They know where Mom lives!"
"Your mother no longer lives anywhere, Tyler," Grandma Margaret replied coldly, stopping five paces from the gate. "The house in Elmwood belongs to Nora’s legal trust now. You are trespassing on private property."
"Nora!" Tyler snapped, his eyes locking onto me with desperate venom. "Tell her! You’re Evan’s wife! We’re family! Evan would have never let his own brother get his legs broken over money!"
Hearing Evan’s name spew from his mouth made a white-hot fury ignite within me.
"Don't you dare speak for Evan," I said, my voice cutting through the damp chill. "Evan worked eighty hours a week so his daughter would have a secure future! Evan walked miles to the hospital when our car broke down because he refused to dip into our savings! While you sat in air-conditioned casinos throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars that your mother stole from Evan’s orphan!"
Patricia pushed Tyler aside, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks. "Nora, please! We know we made mistakes! But we can fix this! Just tell Richard to hold off on the police report! If Tyler gets arrested, his record will ruin his life! If you drop the charges, we’ll leave the state. We’ll never contact you again!"
"Mistakes?" Richard Vance stepped forward, holding up a certified manila envelope. "Forging federal insurance documents, stealing one hundred and eighty thousand dollars of child support funds, and laundering Evan Vance’s death benefit through an illegal offshore LLC is not a mistake, Patricia. It is organized felony fraud."
Tyler’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. "You think you’re so righteous, old woman? You think you can just write me out of everything? If I go down, I’m taking this entire family’s reputation with me! I have copies of every financial document! I’ll go to the press! I’ll tell the papers the Vance matriarch let her own daughter become homeless while harboring her grandson’s gold-digging widow!"
"Try it," Grandma Margaret whispered, her voice dropping into a deadly, regal calm. "Arthur, open the outer gate."
Tyler blinked, caught off guard. "What?"
The heavy electronic gate clicked, swinging inward. But instead of an invitation inside, the sudden wail of police sirens echoed down the tree-lined boulevard. Four squad cruisers turned the corner, red and blue lights painting the trees in violent streaks of color.
Patricia shrieked, clutching Tyler’s arm. "Mother, no! What did you do?!"
May you like
"I did what should have been done five years ago," Grandma said, not flinching as the cruisers screeched to a halt behind Patricia’s rental car. "Detective Miller, they are all yours."
***
