Detective Ortiz quietly entered the room and stood behind me. She set a small, battered prepaid burner phone on the table next to the flash drive.

“Your technical security is as sloppy as your accounting, Mr. Hale,” Ortiz said smoothly. “You thought deleting text messages erased them. We restored the entire cache from the SIM card.”

Ortiz picked up the phone, scrolled for a second, and read aloud in a flat, devastating tone:

“Message sent to Vanessa Cole, 11:02 p.m., night of the fire. ‘Make sure Eleanor is home. The daughter too. No witnesses, no complications. The spark is lit.'”

A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the room.

My father looked at me. The mask was completely gone now. The monster was bare. And for one terrifying, crystalline second, I saw the absolute truth in his cold, dead eyes: he was not sorry my mother was dead.