“I want to turn it into a shelter. A safe place for mothers and children who have nowhere else to go.”

A small, genuine smile touched Richard’s lips.

“We can make that happen,” he said. “I will personally fund the transition.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“But first, we have to deal with this,” Nora said, her tone shifting to serious.

She pulled out a separate manila folder from the bottom of her stack.

“Before you arrived, I received a secure file from a contact in the federal marshal’s office.”

“Does it have to do with the phone call we received?” Richard asked, leaning forward.

Nora nodded, her face pale.

“Charles didn’t just lose money in bad investments, Emily,” she said to me.

“He took out private loans from some very dangerous people to cover up his mother’s embezzlement.”

“To protect Margaret?” I asked, confused.

“Or to protect himself,” Nora countered.

She slid a single sheet of paper across the table toward me.

It was a copy of a promissory note.

My eyes scanned the legal language, stopping at the bottom.

There was Charles’s signature, shaky and desperate.