Jake shoved past him, forcing the door wide open and pulling me and Owen into the warm entry hall.

Walter walked out of the kitchen, his posture rigid, his grey eyes cold.

“You don’t live here anymore, Jake,” Walter said, his voice entirely calm. “This house belongs to us now.”

“You locked my wife and my son out in a blizzard,” Jake said, his voice dangerously quiet.

Patricia appeared behind Walter, crossing her arms over her expensive sweater.

“She was trespassing on our property, Jake,” Patricia said. “We legally own this estate now. You should have stayed gone.”

Logan chuckled from the hallway, swirling the ice in his glass. “You’re a ghost, big brother.”

I shivered under Jake’s coat, holding Owen tightly as his small body finally began to warm up.

I had been secretly meeting with a federal financial investigator named Daniel Reyes for weeks, trying to track what they were doing to our accounts, but I had not yet told Jake the full scale of their betrayal.

Before Jake could move toward his father, headlights flashed against the front window again.

A county deputy’s cruiser pulled into the driveway, its red and blue lights painting the falling snow in bright hues.

“I called them,” Walter said, pulling a folded piece of paper from his coat pocket. “To have your wife removed for trespassing.”

The front door opened, and Deputy Miller stepped inside, snow clinging to his dark wool collar.

“We have an unwanted guest here, Deputy,” Walter said, pointing a finger at me.

Jake stepped directly between the deputy and us.

“Deputy, look at my wife’s hands,” Jake said. “They locked her and a six-month-old baby out in below-freezing temperatures.”

“That’s a absolute lie,” Patricia spoke up quickly, her voice smooth. “She went out for a walk on her own.”

Jake pulled his smartphone from his pocket and tapped the screen.