Chapter 4

Grayson was taken to the local police station.

The interrogation room lights were a harsh, blinding white.

Two men handled the questioning: a young officer and a veteran detective who'd clearly seen it all.

The detective's name was Lambert. He didn't have to raise his voice to command the room.

"Name, age, ID number."

Grayson gave them one by one.

Officer Lambert flipped through the case file in his hands, his eyes sharp as a hawk's.

"Grayson Finch, what's your relationship to a man named Michael Lambert?"

"Rival for the same woman." Grayson answered without hesitation.

Officer Lambert looked up and studied him for a moment.

"You know what happened to him?"

"No."

"He's dead." Officer Lambert's voice was calm, but it dropped into Grayson like a boulder into still water. "Three days ago, someone found his body in a reservoir. The medical examiner determined he'd been drugged and then sunk into the water."

Grayson's stomach dropped.

He remembered what his former mother-in-law had said on the phone, that Michael had taken the money and run.

So it turned out he was dead.

"What does that have to do with me?"

"Plenty." Officer Lambert slid a document across the table. "Your ex-wife, Eleanor Chavez, didn't have a stroke either. Someone dosed her with a neural agent, causing central nervous system damage. She's in the ICU right now, comatose."

Grayson's mind was a blur.

Michael was dead.

Eleanor was poisoned and comatose.

What the hell had actually happened?

"Here's the interesting part." Officer Lambert's next words dropped him straight into an ice pit. "We found that before all this, Eleanor took out an accident insurance policy worth eight million dollars. And the beneficiary on that policy was switched, the day before the crime, from Michael to your name."

Grayson felt his head about to split open.

The beneficiary was him?

That was impossible!

"That's impossible!" He shot to his feet. "We're already divorced! I don't know anything about this!"

"Sit down!" the young officer barked.

Grayson sank back into the chair.

He understood now.

This was a setup.

A vicious setup, one that had been laid before the divorce even happened.

Secretly photographing her medical report had been to confirm Eleanor's physical condition, to make buying that huge policy easy.

Forcing him to sign that "debt-severance waiver" had been to cut him loose in the eyes of the law.

And that showy wedding had been nothing but a performance for outsiders.

Michael's goal, from the very start, had never been to run off happily with Eleanor.

It had been insurance fraud.

He just hadn't figured he'd be the one thrown to the wolves.

And now, every piece of evidence pointed at Grayson.

Motive for murder? Love turned to hate, revenge against a rival.

Means and opportunity? He was the sole beneficiary of the policy.

His former mother-in-law Gabriella, sobbing her accusations at the police department, had nailed him even harder to the scapegoat's pillar of shame.

"Officer, it's him! He's the one who did it!"

"He's never gotten over our Eleanor. He kept harassing her even after the divorce!"

"He was jealous that Michael had more money than him, that's why he did something this evil! He wanted to kill Michael and Eleanor, then swallow that insurance payout all by himself!"

A net had been drawn tight around him, with no gap to slip through.