“I walked into my own mansion expecting my wife to run into my arms, but instead I found my family celebrating my money while the woman I loved was missing.

too quickly.

Emma walked past him toward the library.

The rest of us followed.

The library had once been my favorite room in the house. Dark shelves, leather chairs, my father’s old desk positioned near the window. When I was young, he used to sit there balancing household bills with a pencil behind his ear, telling me that money was only useful if it protected the people you loved.

Now the room smelled faintly of shredded paper.

Samuel noticed it too.

Margaret stood in the doorway. “This is absurd.”

Emma knelt beside the lower cabinet built into the wall behind the desk.

“It’s locked,” she said.

Jennifer crossed her arms. “Because it contains private family documents.”

“I’m family,” Emma said.

No one answered.

I turned to my mother. “Open it.”

She stared at me for a long moment.

Then she removed a key from her bracelet.