Chapter 13 - THE SECOND WILL
The bullet hit the light fixture above them.
Glass rained down.
Claire screamed.
Evan pulled her behind a concrete pillar.
Samuel crawled toward an emergency exit.
Derek fired again.
"I don't want to hurt anybody!"
Derek laughed nervously.
"Give me the ledger."
Claire had triggered an emergency alert on her phone before they entered.
Derek cursed and ran.
Police caught him two blocks away.
The gun was still in his car.
Martin arrived at the station with three lawyers.
By midnight, Derek was charged with burglary, assault and weapons offenses.
Martin told reporters his son was under emotional stress.
Evan watched the interview from Claire's apartment.
"He explains everybody," Evan said.
Claire looked at him.
"Except us."
Samuel survived with a cut from falling glass and gave a formal statement.
The codicil was real.
Robert had signed it six months before his death.
But the original had never reached probate.
Martin had filed the older will instead.
Evan sat with an independent estate lawyer the next morning.
"If this holds," she said, "you own Mara's twenty-five percent retroactively through her estate."
"What about the dividends paid to Claire?"
Claire looked sick.
The lawyer answered carefully.
"Those distributions may have to be repaid."
Claire whispered, "I don't have all of it."
"I know."
"You could sue me."
"I know."
"Are you going to?"
The lawyer continued.
"There is another issue."
She turned the last page of the codicil.
Robert had included a confession.
He admitted that Mara and Samuel's ownership had been concealed.
He also admitted Martin had threatened him for years.
But one paragraph was blacked out with thick ink.
The lawyer held the page to the light.
Mara's collision was not an accident.
Evan's pulse jumped.
The next line was harder to read.
I know because Martin confessed to me.
May you like
And then the final words.
Helen was in the room when he did.
