PART 2: I lied to my dad and told him I had failed the entrance exam, even though my score was 98.7
“No, you don’t understand,” Sanders stammered, his voice trembling so violently the papers rattled. He grabbed my arm, trying to pull me toward the exit. “The clause… your mother’s secret. If you invoke it, it doesn’t just take the Pasadena house away from Arthur. It unseals the asset protection trust from twenty years ago.”
“Good!” I said, pulling away. “Let them take everything he owns!”
“Diane, listen to me!” Sanders yelled, breaking the decorum of the room entirely. “The trust doesn’t belong to your mother. It belongs to the estate of Arthur’s first wife. The woman who allegedly died in a car crash twenty-two years ago. The woman whose life insurance built Arthur’s entire empire.”
Sanders looked at Arthur, whose face had gone from pale to a horrific, unnatural shade of grey.
“The autopsy report is attached to the trust activation, Diane,” Sanders whispered, the words hanging in the sudden, suffocating silence of the ballroom. “Your mother didn’t hide a house from him. She hid evidence. Arthur didn’t just try to steal your inheritance…”
Sanders swallowed hard, his eyes reflecting a terrifying, historical horror.
“…He murdered his first wife to get it. And the proof is inside that envelope you are holding.”
Before I could even process the words, the chandeliers above us suddenly flickered and died, plunging the entire Beverly Hills ballroom into pitch-black darkness.
And then, a gun shot echoed through the dark.
See more on the next page
