“You gave me nothing but twenty years of contempt,” I said, my voice ringing off the hospital glass. “Grandpa gave me a home, an education, and the courage to protect people who can’t protect themselves.

Mercy belongs to the victims. Justice belongs to you.”

I hung up, and cut the line for good.

The trial ran seven grueling weeks. The decrypted archive tied my family to eleven separate victims across the state — three of whom had died under suspicious medical circumstances.

The corrupt physician took a plea to avoid a death sentence, testifying under oath that my parents had ordered him to make Franklin’s death look natural.

The sentences were absolute. My father got twenty-eight years in a maximum-security facility. My mother, twenty-four. Wyatt — who’d built the shell companies and destroyed the financial evidence in the earlier cases — got thirty-six, without parole.