Nobody moved.

I looked at her.

“Your husband?”

Her face had gone completely white.

“My husband died eleven years ago.”

Daniel’s recording continued.

Marcus spoke.

“Thomas knows about the audit.”

Daniel answered.

“Then he knows I found the Cayman accounts.”

“You should cancel the wedding.”

“No.”

“You should disappear.”

“I did that once.”

“Daniel—”

“If I don’t marry Claire before Friday, the succession clause stays open.

If I’m declared dead unmarried, my shares revert to the Reeves Family Trust.”

Marcus swore softly.

“And who controls the trust?”

Daniel answered.

“My father.”

Evelyn swayed.

Someone caught her.

The stranger turned.

And ran.

I looked at the memorial photograph beside the coffin.

Daniel’s parents stood behind him at his university graduation.

Evelyn looked twenty years younger.

Beside her stood a tall man with dark hair.

Thomas Reeves.

Daniel’s father.

Officially dead since 2015.

I looked toward the stranger sprinting through the rain.

Older.

Thinner.

Gray hair.

But the same jaw.

The same eyes.

The same small notch in the left ear.

“Oh my God.”

Evelyn followed my gaze.

And screamed.

“THOMAS!”

The man stopped.

For one impossible second, husband and wife stared at each other across eleven years of lies.

Evelyn’s umbrella slipped from her fingers.

“You’re dead.”

Thomas Reeves smiled.

It was the coldest expression I had ever seen.

“No,” he said.

Then he reached inside his jacket.

Everything exploded at once.

People screamed.

Chairs overturned.

The funeral director dropped behind the coffin.

I hit the ground.

A man tackled Thomas from the side before he could pull whatever he was reaching for.

Marcus.

They crashed into the grass.

Thomas drove an elbow into Marcus’s face.

Marcus held on.

Then three unmarked vehicles tore through the cemetery gates.

Doors flew open.

“POLICE!

HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

Thomas froze.

Detectives surrounded him.

A woman in a dark raincoat forced his arms behind his back.

Marcus rolled onto his side, blood running from his nose.

I stared at him.

“You ran.”

He spat blood into the grass.

“To call the detective handling Daniel’s audit.

Thomas jammed cell service around the cemetery.

I had to get beyond the gate.”

“But the insurance—”

“Fake.”

“What?”

“That beneficiary change never happened.”

My stomach tightened.

Marcus nodded toward my phone.

“Daniel planted it.”

“Why?”

“To see where the document appeared after he uploaded it.

Someone had been accessing his private files.”

“Who?”

Marcus looked toward Thomas.

“No.”

He turned toward Daniel’s sister.

Natalie Reeves was gone.

The coffin latch clicked.

Nobody spoke.

Mr.

Keller lifted the lid.

Evelyn refused to look.

I didn’t.

I stepped closer.

The body inside had been badly burned.

The face was almost completely unrecognizable.

For one horrible moment, my knees weakened.

Then I saw the hands.

Daniel had broken his right index finger playing baseball at sixteen.

The knuckle had never healed straight.

This man’s fingers were perfectly aligned.

“That isn’t Daniel.”

Marcus came beside me.

“No.”

“Who is it?”

The detective who had arrested Thomas approached.

“Claire Bennett?”

I nodded.

“Detective Elena Moreno.”

She showed me her badge.