“I don’t want innocent people losing escrow money because Eleanor decided fraud was a personality trait.”

“Already accounted for,” Benjamin said. “I’ll contact their attorney immediately and provide the trust documents, title history, and notice of unauthorized representation. Give it a few hours. I imagine her phone will become quite lively by afternoon.”

“Benjamin?”

“Yes?”

“Make it clean.”

“It already is,” he said. “Arthur made sure of that.”

Arthur.

Hearing my father’s name still hurt in a place too deep to touch directly.

After I hung up, I rose from the island and walked through the house. I did that often now, though I pretended there was always a reason. Checking windows. Straightening books. Opening curtains. Watering plants. In truth, I was still learning how to exist inside the house without him in it. Every room held him with devastating precision. The small nick in the dining room floor from when he dropped a toolbox. The brass reading lamp in the library with the switch he repaired but never replaced because he liked the old weight of it. The framed blueprint of the house hanging near the stairs. The kitchen drawer that stuck unless you lifted it slightly. The faint pencil marks inside the pantry door recording my height year after year until I turned sixteen and told him I was done being measured.

He had laughed and said, “Nobody is ever done being measured, Harp. We just change the instrument.”

I touched the pantry door now and closed my eyes.

I was still standing there when the knock came.

Heavy.

Rhythmic.

Not a neighbor. Not a delivery. Not someone uncertain.

I moved toward the foyer, my pulse rising despite myself. Through the frosted glass sidelights, I saw a man’s silhouette in a dark suit. He stood too straight, held something under one arm, and did not step back after knocking.

I opened the door.

“Harper Sterling?” he asked.

He held out a thick manila envelope. “You’ve been served.”

The envelope felt heavier than paper should. The process server turned and walked down the porch steps without another word, as if he delivered detonations for a living and had learned not to watch them go off.

I tore the envelope open in the foyer.

It was not about the sale.

Eleanor had filed an emergency petition to freeze my personal bank accounts, claiming I had been embezzling from my father’s estate, misappropriating household funds, and hiding assets related to the trust. The language was formal, but the intention was savage. She was not merely trying to remove me from the house. She was trying to financially suffocate me before I could fight back.

For one brief second, anger flashed so hot through my body that my vision blurred.

Then it cooled.

Eleanor had made a mistake.

She had assumed I would panic.