My brother screamed when Dad collapsed beside the Thanksgiving turkey, but his next words revealed a shocking secret about Grandpa's mysterious death three years earlier…

"Miles," Marshall Grady croaked, his hands still holding Conrad’s head in the dirt. "Miles, we can fix this."

I looked down at the attorney. The man was pathetic. He had spent forty years posturing as an aristocrat, charging seven hundred dollars an hour to write trusts for the Maine elite, and now he was kneeling in a puddle of spilled wine and vomit, bargaining like a cornered rat.

"Fix what, Marshall?" I asked, standing up and wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my bloody, wine-stained sleeve. "Are you going to resurrect August Tolland?"

"No, no, of course not," Marshall stammered, his eyes darting toward the briefcase on the sideboard. "The murder... that's Reid and Conrad. I didn't know about the foxglove! I swear on my children's lives, Miles, I thought August had a genuine heart attack! Conrad told me after the funeral that August had passed naturally! I only helped with the estate restructuring after the fact!"

"You paid the medical examiner," June said from the shadows, her voice venomous.

"To avoid an invasive autopsy on a respected community elder!" Marshall cried, his voice pitching into a desperate whine. "That's not murder, Miles! That's an administrative ethics violation! A fine! Maybe a suspension! But listen to me—listen to the financial reality!"

Marshall pointed a trembling finger toward his briefcase.

"The eight million dollars. August's trust. Conrad never told Reid the full truth about that money. Conrad didn't tell *anyone* the full truth."

I walked over to the sideboard, reached into the open leather briefcase, and pulled out the thick Manila folder marked *AUGUST TOLLAND IRREVOCABLE MARITIME TRUST — AMENDED 2021*.

I flipped through the crisp, cream-colored pages under the dim yellow generator light.

"What am I looking at, Marshall?"

"Page fourteen," Marshall breathed, scrambling up from the floor to sit back against the base of the dining table, carefully keeping his distance from me. "The secondary indemnification clause. Conrad thought he was so smart. When he realized August had frozen him out of the liquid accounts, Conrad had me draft an emergency assignment of beneficial interest."

I turned to page fourteen.

My eyes scanned the dense legal language, the Latinate terms, the cross-references to the Maine Probate Code.

My blood ran cold.

"This isn't an inheritance," I said slowly, reading the clauses. "This is a life insurance execution."

"Yes!" Marshall said eagerly, nodding like a bobblehead. "Conrad took out a key-man commercial life insurance policy on you five months ago through a shell entity in Delaware—*Blackwood Maritime Holdings LLC*. He forged your signature on the medical release and the beneficiary designation. He insured your life for twelve million dollars."

Reid slowly lifted his head from the floor, his swollen face turning toward Marshall with an expression of stunned betrayal.

"What?" Reid croaked. "Twelve million? Dad told me it was only August's eight million trust."

Marshall gave Reid a look of profound disgust.

"Your father was going to screw you, Reid. Did you really think he was going to split eight million dollars with an unemployed gambler who owes half a million to sportsbooks in Boston? The plan was to collect the eight million from August’s trust upon Miles’s death, plus the twelve million from the Delaware life insurance policy. Twenty million dollars total. Conrad had already arranged to wire sixteen million of it to an offshore account in the Cayman Islands under a Panamanian corporation."

Marshall looked back at me, his eyes pleading.

"Conrad was leaving the country, Miles. He had a private charter booked out of Bangor International Airport for Sunday night. He was going to leave Reid here to take the fall for the fraudulent trust filings. He was going to let the banks foreclose on the docks, let the state police investigate Reid for your 'accidental' heart attack, and disappear into South America."

The silence in the dining room became suffocating.

Reid sat on the floor, his mouth hanging open, staring at the unconscious form of our father.

The man he had murdered his grandfather for.

The man he had just tried to help murder his brother for.

"He was leaving me?" Reid whispered, his voice cracking like thin ice. "He told me we were rebuilding the shipping lines together. He told me I was going to be the CEO."

"You were going to be the inmate, you idiot," Marshall snapped, his aristocratic composure entirely shattered. "Conrad has never loved anyone in his life except the reflection in his dressing mirror. He used you to crush the foxglove three years ago, and he used you to pour the wine tonight."

Reid’s hands began to shake violently. He looked down at his ruined loafers, then at the brass poker lying in the cranberry sauce, then at Conrad’s gray, motionless face.

A low, guttural wail began to build in Reid’s throat—a sound of total, absolute, pathetic ruin.

"I gave up my life for him," Reid sobbed, clutching his head in his hands. "I did everything he asked. Everything!"

"Shut up, Reid," I said.

I tucked the insurance documents under my arm and looked toward the large casement windows overlooking the driveway.

Through the howling storm, faint sweeps of crimson and sapphire light were cutting through the swirling sleet.

The emergency responders had breached the lower gate.