The scream left my throat before I understood what my mother had done.“Mom!” My newborn daughter, Ava, was falling toward the fire pit. One second earlier, my mother, Diane Mercer, had been holding her on my parents’ patio in suburban Ohio. Ava was nine days old, wrapped in a pink hospital blanket.

Ava shrieked in the backseat.

“Hold on!” Dad yelled, gripping the steering wheel as the sedan fishtailed on the wet asphalt.

The black pickup swerved alongside us, trying to side-swipe us into the metal guardrail over the Scioto River bridge. Through the tinted window of the truck, I saw the driver—a heavily tattooed man hireling—and sitting in the passenger seat was my sister, Melissa, her face twisted in terrified determination.

“Dad, turn right! Into the old industrial park!” Ryan yelled, pointing toward an upcoming exit.

Dad slammed on the brakes, sending our sedan into a hard right turn down a gravel access road that led toward an abandoned brick warehouse by the riverbanks. The pickup truck overshot the exit, screeching its tires before spinning around to chase us down the dark alley.

Dad slammed the sedan to a halt inside the rusted frame of the warehouse. The pickup truck skidded into the entrance behind us, blocking the only exit with its massive frame.

The headlights of the pickup illuminated our car in a blinding white glare.

The truck doors flew open. Two armed men stepped out, followed by Diane Mercer, wearing a heavy trench coat, and Melissa. Diane was holding a sleek black leather briefcase in one hand and a heavy steel crowbar in the other.

“Get out of the car, Robert!” Diane’s voice echoed off the rusted steel beams of the warehouse. “It’s over!”

Dad, Ryan, and I stepped out of the vehicle. Ryan kept himself between the men and the car seat where Ava lay.

“Tomorrow is Day 30, Diane,” Dad said, stepping forward into the headlight beams. “The police know everything. You can't run from this.”

“I don't need to run!” Diane laughed—a sound so bitter and manic it sent shivers down my spine. “If Claire signs an emergency waiver relinquishing estate rights before midnight, or if the child is declared legally unverified, the trust defaults to the surviving spouse of the primary trustee—ME! I took care of this company for thirty years! I built it! It belongs to me, not Evelyn’s weak little bastard!”

Melissa stepped forward, her hands shaking as she held a legal document. “Claire... just sign the paper. Please! Mom promised we can all leave the country together! Just sign it and nobody gets hurt!”

I looked at Melissa—the girl I had grown up with, shared a bedroom with, called my sister.

“You helped her try to burn my nine-day-old baby,” I said, my voice cutting through the heavy hum of the rain outside. “You lied to me my whole life. You’re not my sister, Melissa. You’re just her puppet.”