Parenting
“No,” I said, turning away from him. “You are my primary suspects.”
Inside the main house, our forensic technicians struck gold within an hour. They uncovered crushed industrial sedatives, stacks of blank legal forms bearing forged replications of Franklin’s signature, and an encrypted burner phone containing text exchanges with a corrupt local physician.
The doctor had been paid a massive sum to declare my grandfather mentally incompetent. According to the recovered logs, the next step was to systematically increase his sedative dosage until his heart quietly failed.
My mother broke down into hysterical tears in the living room. “You have no idea what it costs to
maintain the prestige of this family name!”
“
Apparently,” I said, looking down at her, “it costs exactly one human life.”
She lowered her voice, attempting to reach for my hand. “Peyton, look… we can fix this. We were wrong about you. We can give you a major cut of the estate. Just make the files disappear.”
I quietly reached up and tapped my shoulder, turning the lens of my body camera directly toward her face as the red recording light began to blink.
