MY BROTHER THREW A HOUSEWARMING PARTY AT MY NEW LAKE HOUSE—UNTIL HE FOUND OUT WHO OWNED THE DEED

Why tonight? Why the frantic rush to throw a lavish party before the paint on the baseboards had even dried?

I pulled out my phone, looking at Nora. She nodded, pulling up a digital dossier we had compiled during the forty-five-minute drive from the office break room.

"Your gym investors are inside, Daniel?" I asked, walking slowly up the steps until I stood on the landing, three feet away from my older brother. "You mean the investors you took two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from six months ago?"

Daniel’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Melissa looked at him, her eyes wide with sudden terror. "Daniel? What is she talking about?"

"Tell her, Daniel," I said, my voice cutting through the chilled night air like a scalpel. "Tell Melissa where the money went. Tell her why you needed a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar lakefront asset registered to your name before the audit deadline tomorrow morning at nine o'clock."

The porch lights illuminated every line of dread carved into Daniel’s face. The charming, golden-boy facade cracked completely, revealing the hollow, terrified grifter underneath.

"He didn't buy any gym equipment, Melissa," I told her, looking directly into my sister-in-law's panicked eyes. "He day-traded the investment capital into high-risk cryptocurrency derivatives. He lost every single cent by August. His investors gave him an ultimatum: either show them proof of unencumbered physical assets worth at least half a million dollars by October first, or they were taking their forensic accounting files to the District Attorney."

Melissa spun toward Daniel, her polished fingernails digging into his linen sleeve. "You told me you bought this house with the gym profits! You told me we were wealthy!"

"I was going to fix it!" Daniel screamed, shaking her off. "I was going to use this place as collateral for an equity loan! I was going to take out a second mortgage on Claire's house, pay back the investors, and then flip another property before Claire even realized what happened! Mom said Claire was never going to live here anyway! Mom said Claire was just going to rent it out!"

"You were going to take out a mortgage on *my* house?" I whispered, the sheer audacity of the scheme making my stomach turn violent somersaults.

"It was an emergency, Claire!" my mother sobbed, stepping forward and grabbing my wrists with ice-cold hands. "He was going to prison! Do you want your brother to go to prison? What kind of sister lets her brother go to prison over a piece of dirt and wood? You could have signed the deed over to him for six months! Just six months! You could have saved our family name!"

I pulled my wrists out of her grip with such force that she stumbled.