Tyler leaned over the jagged balcony, his panic entirely vanished. Marcus had just slipped back onto the deck, offering my brother a subtle nod. The security footage was deleted. Tyler thought he had won. Again.
He stared down at Sarah’s silent, broad-shouldered partner kneeling in the white paramedic uniform.
“Get out of the way,” Tyler sneered, swirling a fresh glass of bourbon. “This is private property, and my sister is clearly having a psychiatric episode. We’ll handle it.”
My mother adjusted her silk scarf, looking down at my broken body with absolute disgust. “Exactly. Stop making a fuss, Bridget.”
Through the searing agony in my paralyzed spine, I forced my eyes open, locking my vision on the male paramedic.
“He pushed me,” I whispered.
Tyler laughed, a cold, arrogant sound echoing off the Roman columns. “Who’s going to believe you?”
“I am,” the paramedic said. His voice wasn’t gentle anymore. It was a battering ram.
In one violent, fluid motion, he stood up and grabbed the collar of his white uniform, ripping it open. Buttons scattered like broken teeth across the patio stones. Beneath the pristine fabric wasn’t a standard undershirt—it was a heavy black Kevlar tactical vest strapped over an olive-drab tee. Pinned directly over his heart was a gleaming gold shield.
Before my mother could even gasp, he drew a matte-black Glock from his waistline, his grip steady, aiming dead-center at my brother’s chest.
“FBI!” his voice boomed, shattering the country-club silence. “Keep your hands on that railing right now!”
Tyler froze, the glass slipping from his fingers.
What my family didn’t know was that Grandmother Rose’s massive estate was a sprawling web of corporate fraud. I hadn’t just been organizing her files for the past year; I’d been handing them to the Feds.
Tyler didn’t just inherit a single letter. He inherited a federal indictment.
And I had just worn a wire to my own attempted murder.