Instead, they had tried to kill me.
Thomas looked at the table.
“I will live with that for however long I have left.”
“Are you sick?”
“Heart disease.
Manageable.”
“So there was no eighteen million dollars.”
“No.”
Something inside me almost laughed.
All that blood.
All that betrayal.
All that careful planning.
Over money that did not exist.
Then Thomas reached into his jacket.
He placed an envelope before me.
I did not touch it.
“What now?”
“Your grandmother’s real trust.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“You’ve seen the amended version.”
My skin prickled.
“What does that mean?”
“Evelyn suspected your mother was manipulating family assets long before she died.”
I stared.
“She changed the trust?”
“Privately.”
Thomas slid the envelope toward me.
“She appointed an independent corporate trustee.”
“Then my mother never would have received my eight million.”
“No.”
“Preston never would have received it either?”
“No.”
My mouth fell open.
“Then…”
Thomas nodded.
“The entire financial premise of their scheme was false.”
A strange sound escaped me.
Not laughter.
Not crying.
Something between.
They had tried to murder me for eighteen million dollars that did not exist and eight million dollars they could never legally control.
Twenty-six million dollars of imaginary greed.
Thomas looked at me sadly.
“The only substantial asset that truly transfers upon your death…”
He tapped the envelope.
“…goes to Julian.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“Your grandmother changed the remainder beneficiary three years ago.”
“Why Julian?”
“Because she believed children should not pay for the sins of adults.”
My eyes filled with tears.
Sabine’s little boy.
The child who had looked into my coffin.
The child everyone told was imagining things.
The child whose single sentence—
Aunt Renee is looking at me.
—had torn apart a murder.
If I had actually died, the person who benefited most from my grandmother’s trust would have been the seven-year-old boy who saved my life.
And nobody planning my death had known.
