grass, “Dad was the one who
signed the medical confinement forms! Don’t you dare pin this on me!”
My father simply stared at me, his eyes filled with a bizarre, deeply delusional betrayal. “Peyton, how could you do this? We are your family.”
“No,” I said, turning away from him. “You are my primary suspects.”
Inside the main house, our forensic technicians struck gold within an hour. They uncovered crushed industrial sedatives, stacks of blank legal forms bearing forged replications of Franklin’s signature, and an encrypted burner phone containing text exchanges with a corrupt local physician.
The doctor had been paid a massive sum to declare my grandfather mentally incompetent. According to the recovered logs, the next step was to systematically increase his sedative dosage until his heart quietly failed.
My mother broke down into hysterical tears in the living room. “You have no idea what it costs to
maintain the prestige of this family name!”
“
Apparently,” I said, looking down at her, “it costs exactly one human life.”
She lowered her voice, attempting to reach for my hand. “Peyton, look… we can fix this. We were wrong about you. We can give you a major cut of the estate. Just make the files disappear.”
I quietly reached up and tapped my shoulder, turning the lens of my body camera directly toward her face as the red recording light began to blink.
“Please,” I whispered, “continue making that bribe on camera.”
Her tears vanished instantly, replaced by a mask of sheer venom.
By midnight, a state judge approved comprehensive search warrants for the main estate, the corporate office, and Wyatt’s downtown apartment. Yet, when my team swept the chapel room, the loose stone floor revealed nothing. The masonry had been recently replaced.
Wyatt sat in the precinct interview room,
