“Step away from my door.”

The locksmith jerked back as if the door itself had spoken.

Grant’s eyes snapped to the camera.

Vivian lifted her chin, that old familiar expression settling over her face: annoyance that an object had developed a voice.

“Lena,” Grant said, smoothing his tone.

“Thank God.

We were worried.”

“You brought a locksmith at dawn.”

“You weren’t answering.”

“Because I blocked you.”

“Exactly,” Vivian said, stepping closer to the camera.

“Unstable behavior.”

I took one breath, then another.

My bare feet were cold against the floor.

My robe was tied crookedly.

My hair was probably flattened on one side from sleep.

But inside my own apartment, with two phones in my hands and the divorce decree on the counter, I felt more awake than I had in years.

“I am calling the police,” I said.

Grant’s face tightened.

“That would be a mistake.”

The locksmith looked from Grant to the camera.

“Sir, you told me this was a welfare check.”

“It is,” Grant snapped.

“No,” I said.

“It is a forced entry attempt.

I am safe.

I did not request your service.

Leave.”

Vivian’s composure cracked first.

“For heaven’s sake, Grant, tell her to open it.

We don’t have time for theater.”

Time.

That word lodged in my mind.

Grant turned away from her too late.

I saw it in his eyes, the split second of fury at being exposed.

He leaned toward the camera, lowering his voice as if volume could erase the recording.

“Lena, there are documents in your apartment that affect more people than you understand.”

“What documents?”

“The blue envelope.”

I glanced across my living room toward the narrow hall closet.

My moving boxes were still stacked there, half-labeled and half-forgotten.

One of them held files from the house: insurance forms, appliance manuals, old tax packets Grant had told me never to worry about.

I had no memory of a blue envelope.

“What is in it?”

Vivian grabbed his sleeve.

“Grant.”

He shook her off.

“If Meridian freezes the Rowe trust before nine, everything changes.”

The words hit the hallway and hung there.

The Rowe trust.

My maiden name.

My father’s name.

For a moment, the apartment disappeared.

I saw my father instead, standing in the open garage of our little house in Eugene, wiping his hands on a red rag, smiling at me with grease on his cheek.

Daniel Rowe had died of a brain aneurysm when I was twenty-seven.

He had left behind old tools, a truck that barely started, and a few boxes of photographs.

That was what Grant had told me after helping with the estate paperwork.

That was what I had believed.

There was no trust.

There had never been a trust.

“Say that again,” I whispered.

Grant went still.

Vivian closed her eyes.

I held the phone closer to my face.

“What Rowe trust?”

The locksmith stood up slowly, drill hanging at his side.

“I am not continuing,” he said.

Grant’s head snapped toward him.

“You are being paid.”

“Not to break into a woman’s apartment while she is inside telling me no.”

I unlocked my second phone with shaking fingers and dialed 911.

While the dispatcher asked for my address, I kept the camera open.

Grant heard enough to understand the situation had slipped beyond