My brother-in-law beat me until blood covered my face, my shoulder was dislocated, and his hands tightened around my throat until everything faded into darkness. My sister never tried to stop him. She only looked at me and said, “You should have signed over the house.” I woke in the hospital expecting defeat, only to find them already celebrating outside my room. But when my father’s attorney placed a sealed letter beside my bed, I smiled for the first time, because they had absolutely no idea what my father had left behind for me... and what I was about to take from them.

I froze in my chair, staring at the woman I had grown up with for twenty-five years.

Vanessa stepped carefully over her husband's convulsing body, holding the sharp steak knife tightly in her hand.

"Daniel was a stupid, greedy man who thought he was the mastermind of this entire operation," she laughed coldly.

She explained that she had manipulated Daniel into killing our father because she didn't have the stomach to do it herself.

She had also convinced him to beat me into submission so she could keep her own hands completely clean.

"But Daniel became a massive liability the moment he hired Marcus," Vanessa continued, pacing around the dining room table.

"He actually thought I was going to split a ten-million-dollar estate with a failed real estate agent," she mocked.

I slowly moved my right hand toward the hem of my sweater, inching my fingers closer to the hidden revolver.

"So you let him poison his own glass, and now you plan to kill me and blame it all on him?" I asked, stalling for time.

"Exactly," Vanessa beamed, looking incredibly proud of her dark, twisted narrative.

"The police will find his body filled with poison and your body stabbed to death in a tragic murder-suicide."

She lunged forward across the table, slashing the blade wildly toward my face.

I threw myself backward, my chair crashing to the floor just inches away from the deadly knife.

I scrambled to my feet and sprinted out of the dining room, heading straight for the dark hallways of the house.

"You can't run from me, Clara!" Vanessa screamed, her footsteps echoing loudly against the hardwood floor.

I ducked into the massive, shadowy library and slammed the heavy oak doors shut behind me.

I fumbled with the old brass lock, clicking it into place just as Vanessa slammed her body against the wood from the outside.

I backed away into the darkness, finally wrapping my hand around the cold steel of the revolver.

I raised the gun and aimed it squarely at the center of the wooden doors.

Suddenly, the large bay window at the back of the library shattered into a million sharp pieces.

A massive figure climbed through the broken glass, holding a tactical flashlight and a suppressed pistol.

“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,”

It was Marcus, the cartel hitman, and he was pointing his weapon directly at my chest.

"Your sister paid me triple to make sure you never leave this room," Marcus grunted, stepping over the shattered glass.

Chapter 6 - The Sister's Betrayal