Chad Woods
He'd barely felt the air on his face before the car was waiting: Melissa at the wheel, Mr. Blue in the passenger seat, quiet and precise. They drove straight to the hospital.
“You sure about this?” Melissa asked, not a question of doubt but of confirmation. Her eyes were bright with the kind of calculation that never blinks.
“I’m sure,” Chad said. He had rehearsed his lines all night in a cell. He knew what to say to an old woman who still believed in family names. He knew how to be the prodigal grandson who’d come back to save the legacy. He knew how to make a dying hand trust him again.
Mrs. Woods Snr lay in the private room with oxygen hiss and flowers, the kind of stillness that made people whisper. The lawyer stood politely in the corner, papers balanced on a tray. Nurs
