Tyler kicked broken glass away. “Dad, what the hell is she talking about?”
Richard snatched the phone and tried my passcode.
Once.
Twice.
On the third failure, the screen went black.
“Idiot,” I said softly.
His face snapped toward me.
It was the first time I had insulted him in eight years. The word struck harder than Tyler’s slap.
“You think you can threaten us?” Richard hissed. “You’re barely alive.”
“I know exactly how alive I am.”
Tyler laughed too loudly. “You don’t own anything. Dad said the house goes to him.”
Parenting advice books
“The house is in a holding company.”
Richard went still.
Tyler looked between us. “What?”
I pushed myself against the cabinet and sat upright. Every bone ached. Every muscle screamed. But my voice stayed level.
“The cars too. The lake property. The investment accounts. Even the insurance policy you two keep asking about.”
Richard’s mouth tightened. “You told me those
papers
were estate simplification.”
“They were.”
Tyler’s smugness cracked. “Dad?”
Textiles & Nonwovens
Richard recovered fast, because men like him mistake volume for power. “She’s lying. Chemo brain. She doesn’t even remember what day it is.”
I looked at the oven clock.
“Thursday. 11:48 p.m. Also the exact time your son committed assault on security camera three.”
Their eyes lifted together.
The camera above the pantry blinked red.
Tyler stepped back. “You record the kitchen?”
“I record my home.”
Richard’s face went pale, then ugly. “Delete it.”
“No.”
He took one step toward me.
The front gate buzzer rang.
Both men froze.
On the wall monitor, two headlights cut through the rain outside. A black sedan idled at the gates.
Richard stared at the screen. “Who is that?”
“My attorney.”
Tyler barked a laugh. “At midnight?”
“And my trustee. And a nurse. I scheduled them for midnight because cowards do their worst work after dark.”
Richard’s eyes widened.
There it was. The first real fear.
He had married a sick woman and forgotten what I had been before diagnosis. Before wigs and IV ports. Before nausea bowls and sympathy cards.
I had built a medical software company from a rented desk and sold it before forty. I had negotiated hospital contracts with men who tried to bury me under legal language and watched them leave my office sweating. I had survived boardrooms meaner than Richard and Tyler combined.
Cancer had taken my hair.
Not my mind.
Not my name.
Not my lawyers.
The buzzer rang again.
I lifted my chin. “Open the gate, Richard.”
He leaned close enough for me to smell whiskey. “You’ll regret humiliating me.”
I smiled through my split lip. “That started when I married you.”
Tyler grabbed my arm. His fingers dug into the bruises near my IV line.
I didn’t flinch.
The kitchen
door
opened behind him.
Doors & Windows