Chapter 1 - The Million-Dollar BetrayalThe flashing red and blue lights of the police cruisers painted the neighborhood in a frantic strobe. As the ambulance doors slammed shut, sealing my wife and sick infant safely inside, I stood on the asphalt, my heart hammering against my ribs.
My mother, Brenda, was currently pressed against the hood of a police cruiser, her designer dress riding up her thighs as an officer clamped cold steel handcuffs around her wrists.
"Connor!" she shrieked, her voice cracking with a mixture of rage and panic. "Tell them to let me go! I am your mother! This is my house!"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My eyes were fixed on the thick manila folder the other officer had seized from my cousin Mason. Mason was standing by the curb, looking like a cornered rat, his eyes darting for an escape route that didn't exist.
"Mr. Bradley," Officer Davies said, approaching me with the folder. "Your cousin claims these are just family recipes, but given the circumstances of the domestic disturbance, we need to verify. You said he was trying to sneak out with the deed to this property?"
"Yes," I said, my voice eerily calm despite the hurricane of fury inside me. "Let me see it."
I opened the folder. The original deed to my house was indeed there. But that wasn't what made the blood drain from my face. Beneath the deed was a stack of papers that made my hands shake.
It was a life insurance policy.
Not for me. For Amy. And another one for Frederick.
They were massive policies—$1.5 million each. The ink on the signature line was fresh, clearly a forgery of Amy's handwriting. And listed as the sole beneficiary on both policies? Brenda Bradley.
I felt the air leave my lungs. My mother hadn't just been abusing my wife. She hadn't just been treating Amy like an unpaid servant while living off the $3,000 I sent her every month.
She was waiting for them to die. Or worse, she was planning it.
Suddenly, Frederick's sudden, violent fever and Amy's mysterious, rapid weight loss took on a terrifying new context. Had she been poisoning them?
"Officer," I rasped, thrusting the papers toward him. "I need you to arrest that woman for attempted murder. And him too." I pointed a shaking finger at Mason. "He's a notary. He stamped these forged documents."
Mason’s knees buckled. He actually wet his pants right there on the manicured lawn. "Connor, wait! Aunt Brenda made me do it! She said Amy was sick anyway, that she wouldn't last!"
The remaining party guests—my aunts, uncles, and cousins who had happily gorged themselves on barbecue bought with my money—gasped in horror. The music had long been shut off, leaving only the sound of my mother's sudden, chilling silence.
She looked at me, her mask of the loving matriarch completely shattering. Her eyes were cold, calculating, and completely devoid of maternal love.
"She doesn't deserve you," my mother spat, not even denying it. "She's white trash, Connor. A barista you knocked up. I was just correcting your mistake and making sure we got compensated for the trouble."
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"Get her out of my sight," I told the police. "Before I kill her myself."
As they shoved my mother into the back of the squad car, I turned my back on the rest of the bloodsuckers I used to call family. I got into my car and sped toward the hospital. The war had just begun, and I was going to burn their entire world to the ground.
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