Toward Thomas.
“You had the shell companies.”
Then she touched her phone.
“I have all of you.”
Thomas’s voice became dangerous.
“Give me that phone.”
“No.”
He lunged.
Mara stepped back.
Adrian caught him.
The two men crashed into a chair.
Marcus pulled Adrian away.
Thomas shouted, “You don’t understand what you’re doing!”
“I understand perfectly.”
“You’ll destroy everything!”
“Good.”
“This belongs to you!”
“No.”
Mara’s eyes filled with tears.
“It belonged to people who destroyed one another trying to possess it.”
Outside, headlights appeared along the driveway.
One pair.
Then another.
Then six more.
Adrian looked toward the window.
“What is that?”
Mara checked the clock.
11:59 p.m.
She smiled.
“Right on time.”
Thomas stared.
“Who?”
Mara looked at him.
“Federal investigators.”
Isabel sat down heavily.
Celeste whispered, “Mara…”
But Mara wasn’t finished.
“There are copies of everything in three different places. The ledger recording is already uploaded. The shell-company records went out this afternoon.”
Thomas’s eyes widened.
“You didn’t know about the ledger this afternoon.”
“No.”
She smiled faintly.
“But I knew about you.”
That hit him harder than anything else.
Mara stepped closer.
“Samuel Gray didn’t exist before seventeen years ago. No birth certificate. No tax history before that date. Nothing.”
Thomas stared at her.
“You knew I was alive?”
“I suspected.”
“How long?”
“Eight months.”
His face crumpled.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you confront me?”
Mara’s voice broke.
“Because I wanted to see whether you would ever tell me yourself.”
Thomas looked away.
“And every morning,” she continued, “you drove past me.”
“Mara—”
“Every breakfast. Every Christmas. Every birthday.”
Tears ran freely down her face now.
“You watched me mourn you.”
Thomas whispered, “I loved you.”
She nodded.
“I believe you.”
That surprised him.
Mara took a shaky breath.
“But love without courage becomes another kind of cruelty.”
Sirens approached.
Adrian sank into a chair.
Marcus stared at the ledger.
Celeste began removing her wedding ring.
Isabel looked toward Mara.
“What happens to Blackthorn?”
Mara considered the question.
The house.
The fortune.
The inheritance generations had lied, killed, and disappeared for.
Then she smiled through her tears.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether Harrison’s original will still exists.”
Thomas laughed bitterly.
“It doesn’t.”
A new voice answered from the doorway.
“Yes, it does.”
Everyone turned.
A woman stood there wearing a dark wool coat.
She was perhaps sixty.
Mara had never seen her.
But Isabel screamed.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
“Anna?”
The woman smiled.
“Hello, Mother.”
Mara stared at Isabel.
“Mother?”
Thomas looked as if the floor had vanished beneath him.
The woman entered carrying a document case.
“My name is Anna Bellamy.”
Thomas whispered, “That’s impossible.”
“No.”
She looked at Mara.
“Thomas was not Isabel’s only child.”
Mara’s mind reeled.
Anna continued.
“I was born four years after him.”
Isabel sobbed.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I know.”
