"Bur:n:ing with a 40°C fever, I was barely able to stand when my husband lashed out because dinner wasn't waiting on the table. I didn't argue or cry. Instead, I quietly signed the divorce papers he tossed in front of me. Smirking, my mother-in-law said, “Who do you think you're intimidating? Walk out that door, and you'll be begging on the streets.”

I stared at the glowing screen of my phone as a wave of intense nausea washed over me.

The hidden clause in my father's will made absolutely no sense.

My father had never even met Ethan before he passed away.

I realized with terrifying clarity that Ethan must have known about this specific legal loophole.

He deliberately orchestrated tonight's fight to force me into signing the divorce papers just hours before my birthday.

If I filed those papers tomorrow morning, he would legally take ownership of the house and my entire inheritance.

I needed to find the original copy of the will to prove that the photograph was a forgery.

My legs trembled as I pushed myself away from the front door.

I stumbled down the dark hallway toward my private home office.

My vision blurred from the extreme fever, making the walls feel like they were spinning.

I reached the heavy oak bookshelf and pushed a hidden button behind a row of law textbooks.

The shelf popped open to reveal my fireproof biometric wall safe.

I pressed my thumb against the glowing green scanner.

The heavy steel door clicked and swung open with a soft mechanical hum.

I reached inside, expecting to feel the familiar stack of thick legal folders.

My hand met nothing but cold, bare metal.

I grabbed my phone and shined the flashlight directly into the safe.

It was completely empty.

My birth certificate, the property deed, and my father's original will were all gone.

Panic gripped my chest tightly as I struggled to draw a full breath.

Ethan did not have my biometric data, so he could not have opened the safe himself.

Someone else with authorized access had betrayed me.

The wooden floorboards creaked softly in the hallway just outside my office door.

I froze in place, listening to the heavy footsteps slowly approaching my location.

I was entirely alone in the house, and the police had already driven away.

I desperately grabbed a heavy bronze paperweight from my desk to defend myself.

The office lights suddenly flickered on, momentarily blinding me.

I raised the heavy bronze weapon above my head.

A tall figure stepped into the doorway and raised his hands in surrender.

It was a man wearing a dark trench coat and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.

“Which daughter is yours?” should have been a harmless question

The first wineglass shattered at 8:07 p.m

The moment the mafia boss’s wife called me “an illiterate servant,”

He slowly took off the hat and looked at me with a grim expression.

"You really should have updated your security clearance, Clara," my estranged brother Leo whispered.

Chapter 2 - The Empty Safe