Chapter 5 - The Masterpiece of Robert Miller
While Madison and Tyler spent the next day packing their designer luggage at the five-star Cairo hotel, basking in the belief that their financial troubles were over, I was on an earlier direct flight to Chicago, arranged through emergency consular channels. By the time their flight crossed the Atlantic, I was already sitting in the conference room of Morrison & Vance Law Firm in downtown Minneapolis, wearing clean clothes purchased at the airport and drinking chamomile tea.
James Morrison sat across from me, a massive leather binder open before him. The sunburn on my face was peeling, leaving angry red patches on my cheekbones—a permanent reminder of what my daughter thought I was worth.
"Robert knew," James said softly, tapping the thick document. "He never wanted to believe it, Sarah, but he was a numbers man. He saw how Madison treated people. He saw how she ran through her college trust fund in eighteen months and came back demanding more. And when Tyler entered the picture with three failed business ventures and mountains of secret debt, Robert came to this office alone."
"What did he do?" I asked, tracing the embossed seal on the binder.
"He created what we call a 'Wolf Clause,'" James explained, turning the pages. "The core estate—the real estate holdings, the four-million-dollar investment portfolio, the municipal bonds—does not simply pass to Madison upon your death. Robert established an independent blind trust managed by our firm. If you die of natural causes, Madison was slated to receive a modest monthly stipend, strictly tied to full-time employment, until she reached age forty-five."
I closed my eyes, picturing Robert sitting at our kitchen table with his reading glasses slipped down his nose, calculating every possible way to protect his foolish daughter from herself.
"And what if I died under unnatural circumstances?" I asked.
"If your death was ruled a homicide, an unexplained disappearance, or took place under suspicious circumstances while Madison or any spouse of hers was present," James read directly from the clause, "every single penny of the estate, including the Minneapolis home and Robert's family heirlooms, is immediately and irrevocably transferred to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Minneapolis Public Library Foundation. Madison would be left with exactly one dollar. And there was a secondary codicil Robert added two weeks before he died."
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James looked up at me, his eyes grave. "Robert authorized me to hire a forensic accounting firm if anything ever happened to you. We ran Tyler’s background yesterday, Sarah. He isn't an entrepreneur. He’s an undischarged bankrupt who owed three hundred thousand dollars to loan sharks in Reno. He married Madison because he thought your family had unlimited cash. They were planning this from the day Robert died."
"Let them come," I said, setting my teacup down without a rattle. "Schedule the reading for tomorrow morning at ten. Tell them you have discovered a surviving document that requires immediate execution."
