I lied to my dad and told him I had failed the entrance exam, even though my score was 98.7😱🥹

“Securing the asset,” one of the men said into a lapel mic, his voice devoid of any emotion.

The man in the center raised his rifle, aiming it directly at my chest.

But he didn’t shoot Arthur. He didn’t shoot Miller.

“Vance sends his regards,” the gunman said coldly.

Marcus Vance. Arthur’s attorney. The man who had been arrested at the notary office. He hadn’t just flipped on Arthur—he had called in a cleanup crew. A crew that wasn’t here to save my father, but to eliminate every single person who knew about the trust, including Arthur himself.

Arthur realized it a second too late. “Wait! Marcus, it’s me! I have the offshore accounts—”

The lead gunman didn’t hesitate. He shifted his aim slightly and fired a burst of suppressed rounds directly into the windshield of Arthur’s Mercedes. A sharp cry of agony echoed from behind the car as Arthur fell to the ground, clutching his chest.

“Now,” the gunman said, turning the barrel back to me. “Hand over the envelope, Diane. Or we repaint this garage with your blood.”

Detective Miller lunged forward, trying to pull me down, but a bullet caught him in the shoulder, sending him crashing into the concrete with a groan of pain.

I was entirely alone. Standing in the open, holding the secrets of two dead women, staring down the barrels of three automatic weapons.

My phone, still in my blazer pocket, vibrated violently.

I slowly reached down with one hand, keeping my eyes on the gunmen, and pulled it out. The screen lit up my face in the dim garage light.

It was an unknown number.

I pressed answer on the speakerphone, my hand shaking.

A woman’s voice—deep, melodic, and chillingly familiar—echoed through the microphone, sounding exactly like the voice from the audio recording I had played in the ballroom.

But it wasn’t Carol.

“Diane,” the voice on the phone said, a soft chuckle echoing through the static. “Did you really think your biological mother died in that car crash twenty-two years ago? Look at the bottom of the envelope, sweetheart. Look at the signature on the true will.”

My eyes darted down to the blood-stained paper in my hand.

Beneath my mother’s elegant handwriting, there was a hidden watermark, visible only under the harsh glare of my phone screen.

A signature that didn’t match the woman who raised me.

A signature that matched the voice on the phone.

“Run, Diane,” the voice whispered as the gunmen took a step forward, their fingers tightening on their triggers. “Because if they get that envelope, none of us survive the night.”

The air in the burning vault of the Van Nuys hangar was suffocating. Smoke, thick with the chemical stench of aviation fuel and melting insulation, swirled around us like a shroud.

I stood in the center of the concrete floor, my vision blurring, my throat raw.

To my left, Marcus Vance lay slumped against the landing gear of the private jet, blood pooling beneath his tailored suit where Aunt Susan’s bullet had found him. His eyes were wide, fixed on the absolute chaos unfolding around us.