Richard’s voice: “Mark, the auditors from Summit are sniffing around the old Horizon contracts again. If they look too closely at the invoices, they’ll see we overpriced the drywall by four hundred percent. You need to move that cash out of your mother’s account into an offshore shell, now.”

Mark’s voice, panicked: “I can’t. She locked the account. The old woman figured out the deposits weren’t my bonus. If I force her to the bank, Claire will start asking questions.”

Richard’s voice: “Then you’d better pray she dies soon, Mark, or we’re both going to federal prison.”

The audio cut. The silence afterward was a vacuum.

Susan inhaled sharply. Mr. Vance slowly slid the lawsuit back into his briefcase, his face bloodless — a man realizing he’d just walked into a conspiracy.

The paper rattled in Richard’s hands. The booming patriarch had become an ashen, hyperventilating ghost.