Grandpa left me $5 million, so my estranged parents sued me, claiming he was “mentally unfit.” In court, my dad whispered, “You really thought you’d get away with it?” I stayed silent. Then, Judge Reyes looked at me and froze. “Wait…Are you Ethan Carter?” he asked. My parents’ smug smiles vanished instantly when the judge stood up and revealed the terrifying truth about how he knew me…

I knew the name. Clydesdale was a shark. He was the lawyer you hired when you wanted to destroy someone, not just win a case.

“They’re going to tear you apart in court, Ethan,” Glenn warned, his eyes full of sympathy. “They will lie. They will drag your name through the mud. They will try to prove you are a predator who preyed on a dying man.”

I looked down at my hands. They were trembling.

I had spent my life avoiding conflict with my parents. I had spent twenty-four years making myself smaller so I wouldn’t be a target.

“Do you want to settle?” Glenn asked gently. “We could offer them half. It might make them go away.”

I thought about Grandpa Richard. I thought about the night he told me, “Ethan, never let them make you feel small. You have a spine of steel, boy. You just haven’t had to use it yet.”

I looked up at Glenn. The trembling in my hands stopped.

“No,” I said. “No settlement. They don’t get a dime.”

Glenn, smiled a slow, predatory smile. “Good answer.”

The day of the hearing, the courthouse loomed like a fortress of gray stone against a bleak sky.