I thanked Warren and hung up. Then I sat in my truck for another twenty minutes, watching my crew move boulders into position, thinking about my next move.

Here’s something about me that my family never understood. I didn’t build a twelve-million-dollar company by accident. I built it by being methodical, patient, and very, very thorough. When I take on a project, I plan every detail. When I face a problem, I gather information before I act. When I make a decision, I make sure I have the evidence to back it up.

Gregory had spent his whole life underestimating me. He thought I was the dumb sister who got lucky with a small business.

He had no idea what was coming.

Step one was reconnaissance.

I called my dad that afternoon, keeping my voice casual.

“Hey, Dad. Just checking in. How are things?”

The conversation started normal enough. He talked about his garden. Dad had always loved puttering around in the yard, probably where I got my own love of growing things. But when I asked about his trip to the financial adviser last month, his voice changed.

“Oh, Gregory’s handling all that now. He said it would be easier if he managed everything together. Something about better returns.”

I kept my tone light despite the alarm bells ringing in my head. “That’s nice of him. So Gregory has access to your accounts?”

“He has power of attorney,” Dad said, like it was the most normal thing in the world. “Your mother insisted. She said I was getting too old to handle the complicated stuff.”

Power of attorney.

My thirty-eight-year-old brother had power of attorney over our seventy-two-year-old father’s finances, and nobody had bothered to tell me.

I ended the call with a cheerful goodbye and immediately called my attorney.

Rachel Park has been my business lawyer for eight years. She’s handled everything from contract disputes to employee issues, and she’s the smartest person I know when it comes to protecting assets. I told her what I suspected, and she went quiet for a long moment.

“Susie, if what you’re telling me is true, this could be elder financial exploitation. That’s a serious crime. You need to be careful here. If you’re wrong, you could damage your family relationships permanently. If you’re right…”

She paused.

“If you’re right, your brother could go to prison.”

“I know that,” I said.

Rachel recommended a private investigator she’d worked with before, a guy named Frank Moretti, who specialized in financial fraud. I called him within the hour.

Frank was gruff, direct, and completely unimpressed by family drama.

“Just tell me what you need and I’ll find it,” he said. “Save the soap opera for the holidays.”

“I think my brother has been taking money from my father. I need proof.”

Frank said he’d have preliminary information within two weeks. He warned me that I might not like what he found.

“I’m prepared for that,” I told him.

But I wasn’t. Not really.

While Frank dug into the financial records, I did my own research. I called the city assessor’s office and found out that there was a new lien on my father’s house, one that had been filed six months ago. Dad had lived in that house for thirty-five years. Owned it free and clear since I was in high school.

Now, suddenly, there was a $200,000 debt attached to it.

My hands were shaking when I hung up the phone.

I also discovered something interesting about the firm Gregory was supposedly merging into. They were legitimate, successful, well respected, but they had a reputation for being extremely cautious about partnerships. They did extensive due diligence, background checks, financial audits, the works.

Which meant either they hadn’t finished their research on Gregory yet, or someone had given them incomplete information.

Warren had mentioned he still had contacts in the industry. I wondered just how much influence a retired investment banker might still have.

Three days after the party, I drove to visit my parents. Not to confront anyone. I needed more evidence for that. I just needed to see my father and assess the situation with my own eyes.

What I found made my blood run cold.

Dad was worse than he’d looked at the party. He seemed confused about basic things—what day it was, whether he’d eaten lunch. Mom kept answering questions for him, talking over him like he wasn’t there.

I managed to get Dad alone for a few minutes while Mom was in the kitchen. I asked him directly about his finances.

His eyes got cloudy. “I don’t know, honey. Gregory says everything’s fine. He’s taking care of it.”

“Do you know how much money is in your retirement account, Dad?”

He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. He didn’t even know which bank his accounts were in anymore.

“Gregory takes care of everything,” he repeated like a mantra. “Gregory knows what he’s doing.”

I left my parents’ house that day with tears in my eyes and fury in my heart. My brother had taken advantage of our father’s trust, his aging mind, his belief that family would never hurt him.

Gregory had built his career on looking smart while other people did the real work.

Now he was building his escape fund on our father’s life savings.

Two weeks later, Frank Moretti called with his report.

The damage was worse than I’d imagined.

Over the past two years, Gregory had transferred $340,000 from Dad’s accounts into his own. He had taken out the loan against the house without Dad fully understanding what he was signing. He had even cashed in a life insurance policy that was supposed to go to Mom if anything happened to Dad.

Total theft: over half a million dollars.

My father had worked forty years as an electrician. He had saved carefully, lived modestly, built a nest egg meant to carry him and Mom through their final years. And Gregory had drained nearly all of it.

I sat in my office with Frank’s report in my hands, looking out at the company I’d built from nothing. Forty-seven employees depended on me. Millions in contracts. A reputation I’d earned through sweat and determination and thousands of hours of hard work.

Gregory had never worked a day like that in his life. He had just taken and taken and taken.

But his taking was about to stop.

I called Rachel. Then I called Warren. Then I called a contact I’d made three years ago when my company did the landscaping for the federal building downtown, a guy named Jerome Williams, who worked in the FBI’s financial crimes division.

Gregory thought he was the smart one in our family.

He was about to learn just how wrong he was.

The next three weeks were the most focused of my life. And considering I once managed seventeen construction projects simultaneously during a supply-chain crisis, that’s saying something.

I set up what I called my war room in my home office. Frank Moretti’s financial report. Bank statements. Property records. A timeline of every suspicious transaction Gregory had made. I covered an entire wall with documents and sticky notes like some kind of revenge-themed Pinterest board.

My cat, Biscuit, was very concerned about my mental state. She kept sitting on the most important documents and meowing at me like she was trying to stage an intervention. But Biscuit doesn’t understand complex financial fraud, so I ignored her professional opinion.

Jerome Williams at the FBI was more helpful than my cat, though slightly less cuddly. When I called him with what I’d found, there was a long pause on the line.

“Miss Fowl,” he finally said, “you understand that what you’re describing is a separate crime from what we’re already investigating. I know securities fraud is one thing, but taking money from a seventy-two-year-old man with declining cognitive function—that’s elder financial exploitation.”

Jerome asked me to send everything I had. Frank’s report, the bank records, the property liens, all of it. He promised to review it personally and get back to me within a week.

True to his word, he called six days later.

“We’re very interested in pursuing this,” he said. “The elder abuse charges would be state-level, but given the overlap with our federal investigation, we can coordinate. However, we need to do this carefully.”

“What do you need from me?”

Jerome explained that the FBI had been building their case against Gregory’s company for months. They had evidence of securities fraud, falsified reports, and misappropriated client funds. Gregory wasn’t the mastermind. That honor went to his boss. But he was involved enough to face serious charges.

The problem was timing.

They wanted to arrest the key players simultaneously to prevent anyone from destroying evidence or fleeing. My evidence about the money taken from Dad added another dimension, but it also complicated things.

“We need a controlled environment,” Jerome said. “Somewhere we know he’ll be. Somewhere we can coordinate with local authorities.”