“You’re right. I don’t.”
Then I pointed to the ring camera over the door.
“With interest, you owe me roughly 1.4 million dollars.”
His face changed.
The woman saw it a beat later and went pale.
I held his eyes. “What I do expect is that the life insurance company, your board, and every journalist with internet access might be very interested in hearing a dead man explain why he abandoned his children and came back only when he needed a family image for a CEO role.”
The woman snapped first. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, I would.” I snapped the folder shut. “You admitted you left them. You admitted why you came back. And my camera caught all of it.”
For the first time since he showed up, he had nothing to say.
That was when a car pulled into the drive.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Voices. Laughter. Doors slamming. The boys had brought some friends home to see the lake.
I stared past Josh’s shoulder and saw Eli and Jonah registering the scene in pieces. Two strangers on the porch. My face. The tension in the air.
Then recognition hit.
Jonah stormed up to the porch and stood near my side. “Get off our mother’s property.”
Eli came over to stand at my other side.
The woman tried to recover her smile. “Boys, we’re your—”
“You’re nothing to us,” Eli said.
