hands clenched so hard my knuckles burned.

Trevor went straight to the utility room.

Catherine moved to my office, entered the safe code without hesitation, and took out my life insurance binder and a folder containing executive succession documents.

She spread them across my desk with a level of calm that made me sick.

Trevor’s voice carried from the utility room.

“Once he’s gone, the audit dies with him.”

That stopped me colder than anything else.

He wasn’t just killing me for Catherine.

He was killing me because he had been stealing from me, and because the walls were closing in.

Catherine answered without looking up.

“By morning the company rolls to me until probate starts.

We move fast, sell what we can, and no one connects anything before we’re gone.”

Trevor stepped into the doorway and leaned against the frame.

“Then maybe all those board dinners you hated finally pay off.”

She didn’t laugh.

“I’m done spending my life smiling next to a man who controls every room he enters.”

Trevor crossed to the bedroom.

Catherine followed.

On-screen, I watched my wife crush two sleeping pills into one of my whiskey glasses, pour a finger of bourbon over the powder, and place the glass on my nightstand.

“He’ll look half-asleep when they find him,” she said.

Trevor replied, “No one smells gas once they go under.”

Rick muttered a curse under his breath.

Reyes raised one hand, still waiting.

“One more act,” she said.

“I want them both dead to rights.”

Trevor returned to the utility room, twisted the valve he believed would flood the line, and cut the wire to the carbon monoxide alarm.

Then he moved to the living room and struck the fireplace igniter.

Nothing happened, because Rick had already shut the gas off at the exterior line.

Trevor frowned and tried again.

Catherine’s voice sharpened.

“Why isn’t it going?”

“That’s impossible,” Trevor said.

Reyes looked at me.

“That’s enough.”

The team moved.

The front door opened hard.

Officers flooded the foyer.

Rick hit Trevor before he could turn fully around and drove him into the hardwood beside the fireplace.

The tool bag flew out of his hand.

Catherine dropped the whiskey glass, and amber liquid spread across the floorboards between her bare feet.

She stared at me as I stepped in behind Detective Reyes.

Her face changed three times in two seconds.

Shock.

Fear.

Calculation.

“Daniel,” she said, voice thin now, “listen to me—”

“Explain what?” I asked.

“The affair? The money? Or trying to bury me inside the house I built for you?”

Trevor strained against Rick’s grip and shouted, “You would’ve destroyed everything.”

I looked at him.

“I built everything you tried to steal.”

Catherine took one step toward me and stopped when an officer moved between us.

“You left me years ago,” she said.

“You were here, but you were never really here.”

I felt something in me finally go still.

“There are a thousand ways to leave a marriage,” I said.

“You chose the one that made my daughter whisper like she was running from a fire.”

That was the first moment Catherine looked ashamed.

Search warrants cleaned up the rest.

Trevor’s truck held burner phones, forged vendor paperwork, stolen company hard drives, and forty-three thousand dollars in cash.

Catherine’s laptop