For the next two hours I laid out the whole sickening saga — the forged loans, the plan to frame Paige, the overheard conversation with Marcus, the medical self-sabotage.

Helena listened in silence, her sharp eyes scanning the forged documents and the pharmacy logs. When I finished, she steepled her fingers.

“Your son isn’t just a fraud, Loretta. He’s a sociopath,” she said flatly. “And he has vastly underestimated his mother.”

“I want to protect the prize money,” I said. “But more than that, I want to stop him. If I just cut him off, he’ll find another victim, or he might actually kill himself faking the next crisis. He needs care — psychiatric care — but he can never touch a cent of my money again. And he needs to answer for the ninety thousand he stole.”

Helena smiled, sharp and brilliant. “We can do all of that. Before you claim the prize, we establish a blind trust to protect your identity and your assets. But your son has us on a timeline.”

She tapped Marcus’s name on a printed email from the drive. “If he and this bottom-feeder have already filed for emergency medical conservatorship, they’re moving fast. They want to corner you while they think you’re vulnerable and exhausted — get a judge to declare you incompetent based on ‘severe distress.'”