They found forged signatures, heavy sedatives, burner phones, and surveillance photographs of our trust attorney.
They also found a draft life insurance policy Edric had tried to purchase on both of our lives.
He had not merely intended to steal our inheritance.
According to messages recovered from his laptop, he planned to stage a fatal car accident after gaining legal guardianship.
The detective read the chilling message aloud from the screen.
“Two girls, one brake failure, no questions asked,” it read.
For the first time, our mother looked truly afraid of the man she had married.
Edric turned on her instantly and snarled, “You wrote that yourself.”
She screamed back, “You promised they would only be declared unstable!”
Their entire alliance collapsed in less than a minute of panicked bickering.
Detective Martin watched them accuse each other before snapping the handcuffs onto their wrists.
As Edric was led away, he twisted his neck toward me with a final threat.
“You think you won, but this is not over,” he spat.
I held Chloe’s hand tightly and felt the weight of the last few years finally lifting.
“No,” I said clearly. “I think you finally lost everything.”
Three weeks later, Edric entered the county courthouse with his head held high.
Their attorneys argued that the recordings were manipulated and that two traumatized teenagers had invented everything to gain early access to their trust.
They fully expected Chloe and me to collapse under pressure during the preliminary hearing.
Instead, we arrived with Dr. Cooper, Detective Martin, our trust attorney, and Uncle Alan.
Alan had recused himself from the legal side but helped investigators trace every single one of Edric’s shell companies.
He hugged us in the courthouse corridor and whispered, “I should have seen the signs earlier.”
“You see it now, and that is what matters,” I said. “Please help us finish this.”
Edric’s lawyer stood up and called me a vindictive child.
