He leaned forward slightly, his eyes deadly serious.
“Don’t trust them,” he said. “Not with this. Not ever.”
A particularly heavy blow rattled the front door, making a decorative vase on a side table vibrate.
“Naomi!” Victor’s voice boomed, close enough now that it might as well have been in the room. “Open the damn door. We can see your car. Hiding isn’t going to make this go away.”
My hand hovered over the laptop trackpad, reluctant to pause Michael but needing to think. The room felt suddenly too small, the air too thin.
“Open up before we make it legal!” Pierce added, his tone hard and mocking. “You don’t want cops up here, do you?”
Cops.
A flash of anxiety shot through me. The last thing I wanted was a scene, some misunderstanding that spiraled. The idea of strangers traipsing through Michael’s secret sanctuary, cataloguing it, made my stomach twist.
I hit pause and looked around, frantically trying to think.
As if anticipating my panic, Michael’s voice—recorded but eerily timely—echoed in my mind.
I prepared for this.
He had always been strategic.
“Think,” I muttered, swallowing. “What did you do, Michael?”
My eyes dropped to the oak pedestal. It had a single drawer beneath the tabletop, almost invisible if you weren’t looking closely. I wrapped my fingers around the small brass pull and tugged.
The drawer slid out smoothly.
Inside lay a thick blue folder.
On the tab, in Michael’s handwriting, one word was scrawled:
PROOF.
The pounding on the door stopped.
I froze, listening.
Through the side window, I saw Victor step away from the porch, his jaw clenched. He pulled his phone from his pocket and stabbed at the screen with one thick finger. Pierce hovered beside him, frowning. Noah stood a few paces back, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
A few minutes later, I heard it—the distant wail of sirens, growing closer.
“Wonderful,” I muttered. “Just what I needed.”
I opened the folder.
Inside, organized with Michael’s typically obsessive neatness, were copies of property deeds showing that he had purchased the estate legally, using money that had been cleanly transferred from our joint accounts. There were notarized documents, correspondence with the county’s planning department, inspection reports. Every possible detail was accounted for.
There was also a separate section, labeled SUMMIT CREST, filled with printouts of emails, company memos, and meeting minutes. I didn’t have time to read them, but the phrases that leapt off the page—“phase two,” “land acquisition,” “zoning exemptions”—told me enough to know Michael had been digging.
By the time the patrol car rolled up behind the brothers’ sedan, my hands were no longer shaking.
A young deputy climbed out, adjusting his hat. He looked barely older than some of my students. His gaze swept over the scene—the fancy sedan, the patrol car, the imposing house, the three men who radiated annoyance and entitlement, and, finally, me, standing in the doorway with a blue folder clutched to my chest.
“Mrs. Quinn?” he called.
