Chapter 3 – The Broken Rib

“A broken rib?” I repeated, the sterile hospital lights suddenly blinding.

Amy collapsed into a plastic waiting room chair, her hands covering her mouth. Her whole body shook with violent, silent sobs.

“Amy,” I said, dropping to my knees in front of her. “Amy, look at me. What happened three months ago?”

Three months ago, I was working the overnight shift at the new downtown high-rise. I was gone fourteen hours a day.

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “She told me she would take you away,” Amy whispered, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks. “She said if I told you, she would use her lawyer to prove I was an unfit mother. She said she’d take Frederick.”

“Who did it, Amy? Did my mother hurt our son?”

“No,” she choked out, digging her nails into her palms. “It was Mason. He came over drunk one night asking your mother for money. I was holding Frederick. Mason grabbed my arm, he pushed me, and Frederick fell against the edge of the kitchen island.”

Rage, pure and blinding, flooded my veins. My cousin hurt my son, and my mother used it to blackmail my terrified, exhausted wife into becoming their personal servant.

“I’m so sorry, Connor,” Amy wept. “I was so scared. I didn’t know how to protect him.”

“You don’t have to be scared anymore,” I promised, kissing her forehead. “I’m going to destroy them.”

My phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number.

If you want to know why your boss is helping your mother, look inside the pocket of the blue winter coat in your hallway closet.

I stared at the screen. Who sent this?

I left Amy with a security guard at the pediatric ward and drove back to my house. The police tape was already up, the party guests long gone. The backyard looked like a hurricane had hit it—abandoned plates of lobster, half-empty tequila bottles, and the crushed remains of Frederick’s first birthday cake.

I unlocked the front door and went straight to the hall closet. I found the heavy blue winter coat my mother had bought me two years ago. I reached into the left pocket. Nothing. I reached into the right.

My fingers brushed against cold metal.

I pulled out a heavy, tarnished silver pocket watch. It belonged to my late father.

But when I clicked the watch open, the face was missing. Instead, stuffed inside the casing, was a crumpled ATM receipt showing an account balance of $2.4 million dollars.

And the account name wasn’t my mother’s. It was mine.