My mouth went dry. Redirect? How?

Only two people knew my aunt had passed—me and Mark. I hadn’t even told Linda.

And then it hit me.

Mark had access to my email for years.
“Just in case you forget your passwords,” he’d said.

I had believed him.

I called the lawyer, Mr. Harris, right there in the gas station, standing between a soda cooler and a rack of scratch-off tickets. His voice stayed steady, but every word landed like a blow.

“Your aunt left you a structured inheritance,” he explained. “It includes both cash and a small property interest. The total is closer to sixty-five thousand dollars—not just a few thousand. And someone submitted a request to change the bank details yesterday.”

My legs nearly buckled. “Yesterday? I was home all day.”

“That’s exactly why I’m concerned,” he said. “The request came from an email linked to your household’s IP address.”

My mind raced to Mark’s laptop, always open on the kitchen table. To Linda’s casual questions—Did your aunt leave anything valuable?—spoken like harmless curiosity.

I looked through the car window at Tyler. He was humming softly, pressing his forehead against his stuffed dinosaur, completely unaware.