UNTIL MY DYING CALL UNCOVERED A DEADLY CONSPIRACY THAT WOULD COST THEM EVERYTHING.

Jennifer Hayes lived in a second-floor luxury apartment in Naperville, paid for, naturally, with cash withdrawals from Ethan’s personal account over the last six months.

While Marcus drove out to Naperville to execute a covert entry on her apartment, my father returned to the safehouse with a thick manila folder under his arm.

"How are you holding up?" Dad asked, setting the folder on the steel table. He looked at my face, noting the color in my cheeks. "You look less like a ghost."

"I feel like a predator," I said honestly. "What's in the folder?"

"The preliminary tox screen on the blood sample I swiped," Dad said, opening it. "Thallium concentration was nearly twelve times the lethal threshold. If you had stayed in that bed another forty-eight hours, Claire, your kidneys would have disintegrated. Not even an emergency transplant could have saved you."

My stomach tightened. Hearing the clinical reality of how close I had come to the grave made the rage flare white-hot behind my eyes. "How did she get it?"

"Marcus was right," Dad said. "Jennifer kept her contacts from her old compounding pharmacy. But she wasn't smart enough to pay cash for everything. We tracked an encrypted message thread between her burner phone and a dark-web vendor based out of Toronto. She used a cryptocurrency wallet to buy five hundred milligrams of liquid thallium acetate. The wallet was funded via a prepaid debit card registered to Diane Vance's home address."

I stared at him. "Diane paid for the poison directly?"

"Diane is arrogant," Dad sneered. "She thought using a Visa gift card purchased at a local Jewel-Osco made her invisible. She didn't realize the supermarket parking lot has high-definition license plate readers. We have video of Diane walking into the grocery store, buying the five-hundred-dollar card, and walking out to her Lexus. The timestamp matches the crypto purchase by twenty-two minutes."

"That connects Diane directly to the murder weapon," I said, my heart racing.

"Conspiracy to commit first-degree murder," Dad confirmed. "Now, look at this."

He slid a second document across the table. It was a certified copy of my mother’s will from ten years ago.

"Why do you have Mom’s will?"

"Because of the survivorship clause Ethan tried to invoke today," Dad explained, tapping a paragraph highlighted in yellow ink. "Ethan thought that because you two were married, all assets inherited from your mother’s estate transferred to him upon your death. But your mother was a corporate attorney, Claire. She knew men like Ethan existed long before you met him."

I read the highlighted text:

*“In the event of the death of Claire Vance without surviving issue, all real property, liquid trusts, and inherited family heirlooms shall revert immediately and exclusively to the Arthur Vance Living Trust, bypassing any surviving spouse or legal partner.”*

Ethan hadn't inherited the house.

He hadn't inherited my mother's jewelry.

He hadn't inherited a single penny of the family trust.

"He never read the underlying trust documents," I whispered, disbelief turning into vicious amusement. "He only read the deed on the county assessor's website."

"The county deed lists you as the primary owner," Dad nodded. "Ethan assumed Illinois marital property laws applied automatically. He has spent the last three months poisoning you for a house and a fortune he will legally never touch—even if you had died."

Before I could answer, the safehouse door opened. Marcus slipped inside, carrying a black leather lockbox under his arm.

"Target acquired," Marcus said, setting the box on the table.

"Jennifer's apartment?" Dad asked.

"Found it taped beneath her bathroom vanity," Marcus said, pulling a set of lock picks from his pocket. Within five seconds, the small brass lock clicked open.

Inside were three items:

First, an audio recording device containing months of taped phone conversations between her and Ethan—her 'insurance policy' in case he betrayed her.

Second, a small amber glass vial containing roughly fifty milliliters of a clear, odorless liquid. Thallium.

And third, a folded piece of paper with handwriting I recognized immediately.

It was a handwritten letter from Diane Vance to Jennifer, dated two months ago.

I picked it up with shaking fingers and read the first sentence:

*“Jennifer, make sure the dosage is increased gradually. Ethan is getting squeamish. We need her gone before the annual trust audit on November 1st, or he will go to prison for the money he took from her accounts.”*

I looked up at my father, the breath freezing in my lungs.