Nineteen-Year-Old Recovering Addict Reclaims Her Deceased Mother's $45,000 Heirloom Chronometer From Her Schemes-Obsessed Older Brother At Auction, Stripping His Estate Power Before Formal Lawsuits...
The call from Investigator Garrity came late that afternoon. The arrest warrant was signed. Julian would be taken into custody within hours. My chance for a private confrontation was shrinking fast.
I knew exactly where to find him. His “estate office,” as he grandly called it, was a rented suite in a nondescript office building downtown. He liked to work late, surrounded by his empty promises and digital blueprints of his failing dreams. I wanted him alone. No crowds, no cameras, no escape.
I drove through the city as dusk bled into night, the streetlights reflecting on the wet pavement. My heart pounded, a primal rhythm in my chest. This wasn’t just about reclaiming Mom’s watch or even about justice for Lily. This was about Mom. About the agonizing truth that Julian had stolen from her while she was fading.
The building was almost entirely dark when I arrived. A single, weak security light hummed over the entrance. The lobby was deserted, echoing with my footsteps. The elevator ride up felt like an ascent into another world, a cold, empty place where only Julian’s ambition lived.
His office door was unlocked, a sliver of light escaping from beneath it. He was there.
I pushed the door open quietly. The air inside was stale, smelling faintly of old coffee and a faint metallic tang from his new, expensive office furniture. Desks piled with documents, whiteboards covered in diagrams that made no sense to me, all lit by the glow of a single task lamp on his expansive executive desk. The rest of the room was cloaked in shadows, making the space feel vast and oppressive.
Julian was hunched over his laptop, his face illuminated by the screen’s pale light. He didn’t look up immediately. He was probably deep in another scheme, another desperate attempt to salvage his crumbling startup.
I closed the door silently behind me, plunging the small sliver of the hallway’s light into darkness. The click echoed in the quiet room.
He flinched, startled, spinning his chair around. His eyes, bleary from screen time, widened when he saw me.
“Maya? What are you doing here?” His voice was sharp, annoyed. “It’s late. You shouldn’t be here.”
I just stood there, letting the shadows cling to me, my gaze fixed on him. There was no one else in the building. No receptionist. No security guard making rounds. Just us. This was exactly what I wanted. A final, isolated moment for the truth to hit him, with nowhere to hide.
The full weight of Bixby’s affidavit felt like a lead weight in my hand, a physical manifestation of his crimes. The sirens were coming, but first, he would hear it from me.
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