ONE YEAR LATER
My investigations firm moved into a larger office in Bellmere.
Behind my desk, I hung a photograph of my father.
Old brown jacket.
Huge smile.
Standing beside the first car he had ever bought in cash.
There were no wedding photographs.
No Blackwell monogram.
No ring.
Nothing from Ravenswood Estate.
Only a small brass plaque beneath Dad’s picture.
It carried the sentence he used whenever I had a difficult contract in front of me:
READ THE FINE PRINT. THEN WRITE YOUR OWN.
People later said I destroyed the Blackwells in one day.
That wasn’t true.
They had spent years destroying themselves.
Thomas falsified records.
Eleanor protected appearances instead of people.
Sophie treated charity like a private bank.
Adrian married a woman he believed he could control.
I did only one thing.
I stopped protecting them from the consequences.
And Adrian’s slap?
He thought it proved I belonged beneath him.
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