Chapter 17 - The Trap at My Mother’s House
Police advised us not to meet Adam.
Instead, investigators created a controlled operation at my mother’s vacant house.
Chloe agreed to wear a wire.
She carried a briefcase filled with copied trust papers.
I stayed inside a surveillance van with Rachel.
Every instinct told me to pull Chloe back.
But she looked at me before entering.
“I helped start this. Let me help end it.”
Adam appeared in the kitchen ten minutes later.
He looked older than his photographs and far less confident.
“You brought everything?”
Chloe placed the briefcase on the table.
“Why did you kill Dr. Price?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
His answer came too quickly.
Price refused to sign the false confession.
Adam struck him during an argument.
Price fell against a table and stopped breathing.
Adam staged the overdose.
“Evelyn said she’d protect me,” he said.
“She’s in jail.”
“She still has people.”
“Who?”
Adam smiled.
“You think Martin was the only adviser your mother trusted?”
He opened the briefcase.
Police moved toward the house.
Then the power failed.
Adam grabbed Chloe and dragged her toward the basement.
The same staircase where Mom died.
I watched the surveillance feed disappear.
I could not stay in the van.
I ran inside before Rachel could stop me.
In the basement, Adam held a knife against Chloe’s throat.
“You,” he said when he saw me. “You always get everything.”
“No,” I answered. “People keep stealing from me and calling it a gift.”
I moved slowly.
Adam demanded access codes to the Bennett trust.
I gave him a false code Rachel had prepared.
When he looked down to check it, Chloe drove her heel into his foot and dropped.
I lunged.
Police stormed the stairs.
Adam was arrested without anyone being seriously hurt.
As officers searched him, they found a hotel key card.
The room was registered to someone named Margaret Bennett.
May you like
My mother.
👉 Someone had been using Clara’s dead mother’s identity to move money, rent rooms, and direct Evelyn’s final operations.
