The clubhouse war room was silent as James Cross dropped a manila folder on the table between us.
We had agreed to meet on neutral ground—an abandoned church Knox had swept for explosives and surveillance. James came with two guards. We brought four. Everyone armed. Everyone ready to kill.
But James did not come to fight. He came to destroy me in a different way.
"Open it," he said, lighting a cigarette. He looked exactly like my father—same sharp features, same cold eyes, but older, harder, twisted by twenty-seven years in prison. "Go ahead, niece. See what kind of man your daddy really was."
I did not want to touch that folder. Every instinct screamed it was a trap, a lie, another psychological weapon designed to break me.
But I had to know.
I opened it.
The first document was a l
