My flight to London was canceled, so I came home at 1:47 a.m. and found my pregnant wife bleeding on our bedroom floor.

Two weeks after the arrests, the true scale of Margaret and Thorne’s criminal empire emerged from the forensic audits.

Marcus Vance and a team of twenty forensic accountants set up a war room in Canyon Ridge’s headquarters. What they found wasn't just corporate theft; it was a methodical, decade-long conspiracy to strip the Wentworth estate down to the bone.

Margaret had taken out four separate life insurance policies on my father in the eighteen months leading up to his stroke. While the state medical examiner had originally ruled his death natural, the D.A.’s office ordered an exhumation and secondary toxicology screening after Carla revealed that Margaret had routinely replaced Dad’s daily blood pressure medication with inert placebos supplied by Thorne.

The toxicology report came back positive for acute digitalis toxicity.

Richard Wentworth hadn't died of a random stroke. He had been slowly, systematically poisoned in his own home.

When Detective Vance called me into his office to deliver the news, I sat in the chair for twenty minutes in absolute silence. The woman who had raised me, the woman who had demanded my absolute loyalty, wasn't just a narcissist or an embezzler. She was a monster who had murdered my father for an inheritance she couldn't even manage.

The district attorney immediately upgraded the charges against Margaret to first-degree premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and attempted murder regarding the assault on Irene.

Bail was revoked permanently. Margaret was moved from the county jail to the maximum-security wing of the state correctional facility, held without bond until trial.

Meanwhile, Carla’s cooperation proved devastating for Thorne. She handed over burner phones, USB drives containing recorded phone calls, and copies of Thorne’s offshore ledger. Faced with ninety-nine years in federal prison under the RICO Act, Derek Thorne folded. Within forty-eight hours, his high-priced legal team signed a comprehensive plea agreement, forfeiting thirty-five million dollars in seized assets and agreeing to testify against Margaret in exchange for serving his sentence in a medium-security facility.

Carla, through her full cooperation and genuine remorse, was granted a plea deal: five years of supervised probation, mandatory psychiatric rehabilitation, and complete forfeiture of any claim to the Wentworth estate.

I visited Carla one last time before her sentencing.

She sat across from me in the visitor’s room, wearing plain civilian clothes, her face pale and devoid of makeup. She looked younger, stripped of the designer arrogance Margaret had cultivated in her.

"I don't expect you to ever forgive me, Austin," Carla whispered, staring down at her clasped hands. "If I could take back that night... if I could undo what I did to Irene... I’d give anything."

"Forgiveness isn't something you ask for, Carla," I replied evenly. "It's something you earn over a lifetime of doing the right thing when nobody is watching. You saved yourself from prison by telling the truth. Now you have to save your soul."

"Is Irene... is she okay?" Carla asked, her voice trembling.

"She’s recovering," I said. "And the baby is healthy."

Carla let out a choked sob, nodding repeatedly. "Tell her... tell her I’m sorry. Even if she hates me forever, tell her I am so, so sorry."

I stood up from the table. "Goodbye, Carla. Take the second chance Dad never got."