Chapter 3 - The Contractor’s Receipt
The mud on the rug was still tacky, capturing the sharp ridges of a Vibram sole. Kristen knelt, her beige cardigan brushing the dust as she smelled the faint, acrid scent of industrial solvent. Her mind raced, connecting impossible dots. Why would one of her mother's men be inside her house on Thanksgiving afternoon?
"Go to the car, Leo. Lock the doors," Kristen ordered, her voice eerily calm.
"Mom, I'm scared," the boy whimpered.
"Do it now!" she hissed, standing up just as a floorboard creaked overhead.
Footsteps rushed toward the back stairs. Kristen bolted for the kitchen, her flashlight beam cutting through the gloom. She reached the back door just in time to see a tall figure in a navy hoodie vaulting over the back fence into the overgrown woods. Clutched in the intruder’s hand was a heavy manila envelope—the exact folder where Kristen kept the certified deeds and bank statements left to her by her late grandmother, documents that Eleanor had spent a decade trying to invalidate.
Kristen pushed the back door open and stepped out onto the damp grass, shouting, "Hey! Drop that!"
The figure vanished into the gray evening fog. Panting, Kristen returned inside and checked the kitchen counter where the folder had been hidden beneath a stack of old newspapers. It was gone. In its place lay a single, crisp business card face-up on the laminate. It belonged to Marcus Vance, Eleanor’s chief property acquisitions manager and notorious fixer.
She picked up the card, her fingers trembling. On the back, handwritten in bold, familiar blue ink, was a single sentence: Sign the probate waiver by tomorrow noon, or the children's school registration gets revoked.
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Kristen stared at the threat, a cold fury rising from the pit of her stomach. She grabbed her phone, bypassing her mother's number entirely, and dialed the local sheriff's non-emergency line. But before the dispatcher could even pick up, her phone screen flickered, and a pre-recorded video file began to auto-play from an unknown sender, showing her children's empty classroom burning down in a staged electrical fire.
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