My mother locked me in a room with five high-powered lawyers and expected me to sign away everything my father had left me. What she didn’t know was that I wasn’t the ordinary government employee my family had always dismissed me as. I was Colonel Sienna Sterling, commander of a specialized military intelligence unit, and while she thought she was cornering a grieving daughter, I was quietly counting the five attorneys around the table and waiting for them to discover that I had prepared an ambush of my own. –

A line written in pencil.

Tiny.

Almost invisible.

I turned it over.

My breath stopped.

Sienna—

If it reaches this point, there is one last thing you need to know.

I read faster.

Do not keep the Boston house because I left it to you.

Keep it only if you want it.

And do not spend your life protecting what I built.

Build something of your own.

I pressed my lips together.

Below that was one final sentence.

Also, the loose floorboard in the upstairs study still squeaks. I never fixed it because when you were nine, you hid your report cards under it and thought I didn’t know.

A laugh escaped me.

A real one.

Small.

Painful.

Perfect.

My mother stared.

“What?”

I folded the letter.

“Nothing you’d understand.”

I walked toward the hallway.

This time nobody blocked the door.

Behind me, lawyers were speaking in low voices.

Martin was answering questions.