He had been alive when my letters came.
Alive when I begged someone in the Reynolds family to listen.
Alive when the quadruplets were born premature and fighting for breath.
And according to the document in my hand, he had refused the envelope addressed to his wife.
My first instinct was anger.
My second was worse.
Recognition.
Victor had never liked me.
Not openly. He had been too disciplined for that. But from the first time Daniel brought me to this estate, Victor Reynolds had studied me as though I were a weakness entering his bloodline.
A state trooper’s daughter.
A scholarship graduate.
No old family name.
No military pedigree.
“You are resilient,” he had told me once at dinner, smiling without warmth. “Women like you often are.”
I had been young enough then to mistake insult for compliment.
Now I held his signature and felt the past rearrange itself.
