The thought nearly short-circuited my brain.

My mind was a storm of chaos.

Was I really supposed to watch a fortune that should've been mine slip through my fingers?

Let my uncle's life's work be swallowed up by some stranger without explanation?

After standing frozen for what felt like hours, I pulled out my phone and called a private investigator I knew.

"I need you to dig up everything on a man named Russ Finch. Three generations back. From birth to now—everyone he's met, every bank transaction, every detail, no matter how small. The more thorough, the better. And make it fast."

I hung up and headed for a five-star hotel.

At the front desk, I handed over my card. The terminal beeped, and the words "CARD FROZEN" echoed through the empty lobby like a slap.

Right. All my cards were just extensions of Uncle Harvey's accounts. Now that everything belonged to Russ Finch, of course he'd cut me off immediately.

I had no choice but to retreat to Grandma Margaret Abbott's old apartment—the run-down place she'd left to my mother.

I counted the cash in my wallet. A few crumpled bills. Forget next semester's tuition—I couldn't even guarantee my next meal.

I sat in the spotless house, a familiar ache spreading through my chest.

My uncle and my mother had been twins. When I was two, a car accident stole both my parents in a single night.

The siblings had always been close. My uncle could never bring himself to sell this place. He came often to clean it himself, saying he could still see traces of my mother here—in the kitchen where she'd cooked, in the garden she'd tended.

He'd never married. He raised me instead, becoming both father and mother, giving me everything he had.

So why—why—would he leave his fortune to a stranger?

I couldn't accept it. I watched the will video over and over, convinced something was wrong.

My hand froze on the mouse. My pupils contracted.

There.

George Acevedo wasn't in the video.

Great-Uncle George was the most respected elder in my mother's family. My uncle had been explicit: a will was only valid if George witnessed it in person.

I scrambled to find the video of my uncle's first will—the one leaving everything to me.

George was right there, clear as day.

I shot to my feet, heart pounding. I was going to expose Russ Finch for what he really was.

I drove back to the villa and slammed through the front gate, ready to storm inside—but Butler Lambert blocked my path.