“You don’t know the first thing about dignity,” I said.

I slammed the receiver back onto the cradle.

The plastic clattered against the desk, the sound echoing in the high-ceilinged room.

My hand was shaking.

“Mom?” Mia asked, her voice barely a whisper. “Was that him?”

“Yes,” I said, drawing a deep, steadying breath. “But we are not letting him scare us. Help me pack these boxes.”

We had to move fast.

I grabbed a stack of folders from the mahogany desk and began sorting through them.

Mia knelt by the bottom drawer of the heavy oak filing cabinet in the corner of the room.

The air in the study smelled of old paper, leather, and the faint trace of Preston’s expensive cologne.

Outside, rain began to patter against the tall glass windows, blurring the yellow lights of the Manhattan skyline.

Mia pulled at the back panel of the deep bottom drawer.

“Mom, look at this,” she said.

She was pointing at a gap between the metal frame of the drawer and the wooden outer casing of the cabinet.

“There’s something stuck back here,” she said.