I stood over two coffins while my parents lounged on a beach with my brother, calling my husband and daughter’s funeral ‘too trivial to attend.’ Then, just days later, they showed up at my door demanding $40,000. My mother snapped, ‘After everything we’ve done for you, you owe us.’ I looked them dead in the eye, opened the folder in my hands, and watched their faces drain of color. They had no idea what I’d discovered. – usnews

Someone was hammering their fists against the solid oak of my front door, rattling the frame. The doorbell shrieked, once, twice, three times in rapid, impatient succession.

I slowly uncurled my legs, my joints aching as if I had aged fifty years in seventy-two hours. I wiped a tear from my hollow cheek, leaving a smear of dirt across my pale skin. I shuffled to the door, the yellow boot still gripped tightly in my left hand.

I turned the deadbolt and pulled the door open.

Standing on my porch, surrounded by a pile of premium leather luggage, were my parents and Mason. They were still sporting their Mexican sunburns, looking annoyed, impatient, and utterly devoid of grief.

Before I could even open my mouth to speak, my father pushed past me, his shoulder roughly clipping mine. He didn’t offer a hug. He didn’t look at my tear-stained face. He just stepped into the foyer, his eyes darting around the house like an appraiser.

“Where is Daniel’s life insurance paperwork?” he demanded, his voice devoid of a single ounce of sorrow. “We need forty grand by tonight, Clara, or your brother is going to prison.”

Chapter 2: The Price of Blood

The sheer, breathtaking audacity of the demand hung in the air, a toxic fog settling over my foyer.

My mother followed him inside, dragging a Louis Vuitton suitcase over the threshold. She dropped her heavy designer purse onto the hallway dining table with a careless thud. The impact knocked over a silver-framed photograph of Daniel and me on our honeymoon. The frame hit the hardwood floor, the glass spider-webbing into a hundred fractured pieces.

She looked down at it, then stepped entirely over it. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

“Don’t play fragile with us, Clara,” she sneered, rolling her eyes as she pulled off her cashmere travel wrap. “We know Daniel had a massive corporate life insurance policy. He was paranoid like that. The accident payout must be substantial, and it pays out fast.”

She walked into my kitchen, opening the refrigerator, inspecting the contents as if she had simply dropped by for Sunday brunch.

“Mason made a… tiny mistake with some private investors,” she called out over her shoulder, her voice dripping with dismissive arrogance. “Forty grand is all we need to make it go away and balance the books before Monday morning.”