The heavy, intricately carved oak doors of the St. Jude Cathedral in downtown Seattle were closed tight against the afternoon traffic. The muffled, somber, angelic sounds of a professional choir bleeding through the thick wood.

Agent Hale stood beside me in the dim vestibule, his hand resting casually on his holstered weapon. Two uniformed state troopers were positioned just out of sight behind the marble pillars.

“Are you absolutely sure about this, Claire?” Hale asked quietly, his eyes assessing my battered state. “We have the warrants. We can just walk in through the side door and arrest them quietly in the rectory. You don’t have to put yourself through this.”

“No,” I said, my grip tightening on Lily’s torn, filthy purple backpack in my right hand. “They wanted a grand, public show to cement their control. They wanted a tragedy. I’m going to give them a resurrection they will never forget.”

I pushed the heavy oak doors open.

The cathedral was packed to capacity. Hundreds of people filled the pews—employees from Cedar & Steam, wealthy investors, friends, and extended family members dabbing their eyes with tissues.

At the front of the nave, surrounded by towering, expensive arrangements of pristine white lilies, stood my brother Nolan. He was standing at the mahogany podium, gripping the microphone, dressed in a bespoke black suit, shedding perfect, practiced, crocodile tears for the cameras positioned in the balcony.

“…Claire was my heart,” Nolan choked out, his voice echoing mournfully through the vaulted ceiling. “And little Lily was our sweet angel. We will never truly understand why Claire’s overwhelming grief drove her to such a tragic, desperate end in those woods. But I promise you all, I will honor her legacy. I promise to step up and lead her company the exact way she would have wanted. We will remain strong.”

My mother, Eleanor, sat in the front pew of honor, dressed in pristine black silk, weeping softly into a monogrammed handkerchief. Beside her sat my father, looking solemn and resolute, and Brooke, playing the devastated sister-in-law.

I took a single step down the center aisle. My bare, heavily bandaged feet made absolutely no sound against the polished marble.

A woman sitting in the back row turned around, sensing the draft from the doors.

She gasped, her eyes widening in sheer terror, dropping her expensive leather purse. The heavy thud drew the attention of the man sitting next to her. He stood up, his face instantly draining of all color, pointing a shaking finger at me.

A physical ripple of shock, like a wave crashing against a shore, washed aggressively through the cathedral. People turned, one by one. The choir’s music faltered, the sopranos losing their pitch, before dying out entirely.

The silence that followed was absolute, heavy, and deafening.

I walked slowly down the long center aisle. I looked exactly like a corpse dragged from a muddy river. I wore the same mud-caked, blood-stained clothes I had nearly died in. My hair was matted with pine needles and dirt.

I didn’t look left or right. I didn’t look away from the altar.

Brooke saw me first. She let out a piercing, blood-curdling scream of pure terror, scrambling backward over the wooden pew as if she had seen a demon crawling out of hell.

My father stood up, his jaw dropping so far it looked physically unhinged. He clutched his chest, staggering backward.

Nolan stopped mid-sentence. His eyes locked onto mine. The color vanished from his face. The microphone slipped from his trembling hand, hitting the wooden podium and falling to the marble floor with an ear-splitting, agonizing shriek of feedback that made people cover their ears.

I reached the front of the church. The air smelled cloyingly of expensive perfume, burning incense, and funeral flowers. It made me want to vomit.

I stopped at the base of the altar steps. I looked up at my brother, my face a rigid mask of absolute, frozen rage.

I raised Lily’s torn, filthy purple backpack high in the air, and dropped it onto the pristine white marble step. The heavy thud echoed through the silent cathedral like a gunshot.

“Sorry I’m late, brother,” I said. My voice wasn’t loud, but in the dead silence of the church, it carried clearly to the very back row without the need for a microphone. “The walk back from your hunting trap took a little longer than I anticipated.”

Pandemonium erupted instantly.

People were screaming, standing up in the pews, knocking over hymnals and flower arrangements in their panic to get away from the altar.

Agent Hale and his heavily armed officers marched swiftly down the center aisle, badges raised high, completely ignoring the screaming crowd.

“Nolan Mercer!” Hale barked over the chaos, his voice cutting through the noise. “You are under arrest by the State Bureau of Investigation for the attempted murder of Claire and Lily Mercer, wire fraud, forgery, and embezzlement!”

As the state troopers grabbed Nolan, slamming him roughly against the altar to slap the heavy steel cuffs on his wrists, I turned my attention away from him.

I looked at the front pew.

My mother, Eleanor, was frozen in place. She was staring up at me, her face contorted in horror, shaking uncontrollably.

“Claire… oh my god, Claire, you’re alive…” she stammered, holding her hands out toward me. “I didn’t know… I swear to you, I didn’t know Nolan was going to leave you out there to die…”

I walked over to her. I reached down and violently grabbed her expensive black leather purse from her lap. I snapped the gold clasp open and dumped the contents entirely onto the marble floor.

Lipstick, a ringing cell phone, car keys, and a small, folded piece of paper with heavily scorched edges tumbled out.

I knelt down and picked up the paper. It was Ethan’s distinct handwriting. Half of the letter had been burned away in a fireplace, but the remaining words were clear enough. Ethan had warned me about Nolan’s massive embezzlement. He had begged me not to trust the family.

And my mother had tried to burn the evidence the exact same night she fed me the poisoned tea.

“You poured the tea, Eleanor,” I whispered, stepping so uncomfortably close she could smell the dirt, the rain, and the dried blood on my skin. “You smiled at me. You handed it to me. And then you tried to burn my husband’s dying words to protect a thief.”

“I was trying to keep the family together!” she wailed, her facade completely shattering, sinking to her knees in the middle of the aisle, grabbing the hem of my ruined pants. “I was protecting our legacy!”

I looked down at the woman who gave me life. I looked at the woman who had traded her granddaughter’s life for a coffee franchise. I felt absolutely nothing. No anger, no sadness, no love. Just a vast, empty void.

“You don’t have a family anymore,” I said coldly, stepping back from her grasp. “You just have a cellmate.”