My husband had spent years warning me never to set foot on that farm. So after he passed away and the lawyer handed me the key, saying that from now on the place belonged to me, I was ready to sell it right away and put everything behind me. But before making my final decision, I still wanted to see it once for myself. When the door opened, I finally understood why, all those years, he had never wanted me to set foot there.

The brothers had escalated.

Joshua’s voice softened again, and in that contrast lay the thing he had always done to me best: he could move from warfare to tenderness in a single breath.

“In the stables,” he said, “you’ll find six horses. Every breed you ever admired aloud when you thought I wasn’t listening. The staff know what to do. Whether you keep them or not is your choice. Everything here is your choice now. That matters.”

I stared at him through tears.

The video ended on his face frozen mid-smile.

Then came a knock at the door different from the others. Official. Controlled.

“Mrs. Mitchell,” a male voice called. “RCMP. We need you to open the door, please.”

For a moment I could not move.

Then survival, or fury, or widowhood, or some new alloy of all three moved through me and steadied my hands. I opened the bottom drawer. There it was: a blue folder thick with documents, exactly where he had said. Deeds. Certified copies. Banking records. Transfer papers. Notes in Joshua’s clean engineering hand.

My phone rang.

Jenna.

I stared at the screen and almost let it go to voicemail. Instead I answered.

“Mom,” she said immediately, no greeting. Her voice was taut with agitation. “Why didn’t you tell me about Dad’s farm?”

I closed my eyes.

“How do you know about it?”

“One of his brothers just called me. Actually, all of them have been calling. They say there’s property, oil, a will dispute, and that you’re in Canada refusing to cooperate. What the hell is going on?”

I looked out the window. Robert was speaking with the officer now, posture calm in the false way of men who weaponize reason. Allan had stepped back, phone still in hand. David kept scanning the house.

So this was their plan. Not just pressure me. Divide me. Reach Jenna first. Cast themselves as family. Cast me as emotional, isolated, uninformed.

“Jenna,” I said carefully, “do not sign anything. Do not agree to anything. I’ll explain everything, but not right this second.”

Her voice sharpened. “If there’s money involved—”

“This is not about money.”

It came out so firmly that even I was startled by it.

There was silence on the line. Then, quieter: “Then what is it about?”

I looked at Joshua’s frozen face on the laptop screen. At the rose. At the blue folder in my hand. At the men outside who shared his blood and not, apparently, his soul.