Chapter 1 - The Report He Couldn’t Touch
“Give me that report.”
Derek’s voice cracked through the bright Miami apartment as he lunged from the doorway.
His hand stopped inches from Skylar’s chest.
She stood barefoot in the center of the living room, wearing the same torn cream slip dress she had fled in hours earlier. Her dark hair hung in tangled strands around her swollen cheek. A small cut marked the corner of her lip.
But she did not look away.
She tightened both arms around the sealed medical report and stepped back.
The older police officer moved between them.
“Step away from her.”
Derek froze as the officer caught his forearm and forced it down.
Behind him, Suzanne clutched the doorway in her champagne evening gown. The smug smile she had worn when Skylar entered was beginning to collapse.
“She’s bluffing, Derek,” Suzanne said.
Skylar’s eyes moved slowly toward her husband.
“Touch it,” she whispered, “and they see everything.”
Silence swallowed the room.
On the floor beside Skylar lay an overturned coffee mug. Brown liquid had spread across the pale wood. Her bank card rested near the spill.
Her wedding ring sat alone on the entry table.
Derek noticed it.
For the first time, real fear crossed his face.
The younger officer stood behind Skylar, watching Derek’s hands. A small red light blinked on his body camera.
Derek’s fist opened.
Then Skylar lowered the medical report just enough to reveal a second object beneath it.
A sealed white envelope.
She placed it beside her wedding ring.
“Read what I left behind.”
Derek stared at the handwriting on the front.
His face drained of color.
Suzanne looked from the envelope to him.
“What is that?” she demanded.
Derek did not answer.
He recognized the name written beneath his own.
May you like
And he knew the person who had signed that envelope had been dead for almost three years.
👉 Derek had spent years convincing Skylar that she owned nothing—but the handwriting on that envelope was about to prove otherwise.
