“You repeated yourself five times, and you nearly wandered into traffic in the parking lot,” he lied, alarmingly smooth.

Sylvia tightened her grip on my hand and steered me toward the dining table.

“We’ve found a wonderful memory care residence for you,” she said, forcing a sympathetic smile. “It’s just a temporary measure, for your own safety.”

Jason set a thick stack of documents on the table—power of attorney forms and asset management authority.

He tapped the signature line with a manicured fingernail.

“We’ll protect everything you’ve worked for,” he said, trying to sound benevolent.

“Everything,” to them, meant my historic estate, my investment portfolio, and the controlling shares I held in Warren Biomedical.

I was the one who’d financed Jason’s failing startup, but he clearly assumed I was worth forty million dollars and easy to pick clean.

What he didn’t know was that I’d spent the last month completely restructuring my estate after finding suspicious company transfers.

My shares now sat inside an irrevocable protected trust, controlled by an independent board of directors.

Jason couldn’t touch a cent of it, even with my signature on every page in that folder.

I let my hand shake noticeably as I reached for the expensive fountain pen.

Sylvia smiled, her eyes bright with greed. “You’re doing the right thing, Mother. You’ll be so much safer there.”

Instead of signing, I deliberately dropped the pen and let it roll across the floor.

“I’m feeling quite dizzy all of a sudden,” I said, sinking back into the sofa cushions.