Chapter 1

The mediation room went dead silent.

I slammed my phone down on the table with the volume turned all the way up. The surveillance footage was crystal clear, the timestamp in the upper right corner showing the exact afternoon the hurricane hit.

The ground beneath the royal palm was completely bare. There was no caution tape, and not a single traffic cone.

Then, on screen, a massive dead frond plummeted from over 40 feet up and slammed straight into Mom's back. She didn't even get a scream out. Her whole body crumpled facedown into the floodwater, and blood spread through the puddle in seconds.

"Take a good look. You never put up any caution tape before the storm." I stared James Kendrick dead in the eyes.

"You tried to pass off photos from April. Did you really think everyone in this complex was stupid?"

The smirk on Mr. Kendrick's face froze. He shot to his feet, snatched my phone, and killed the screen.

"What the hell are you doing!"

He wasn't rattled at all. Instead, he went right on the attack, jabbing his finger in my face. "You pointed a security camera into a private residential complex? That's illegal surveillance of every resident here!"

The screen went dark. He slammed the phone down on the table, his expression turning cold.

"Who permitted you to install a high-powered camera like that? That's voyeurism."

The HOA vice chair, Greg Hollins, jumped up from his seat like a shark smelling blood. "So that's what you've been doing. Spying on all of us!"

He jabbed a finger at me, practically shouting in my face. "No wonder you know exactly who takes their trash out and when. You're a creep. Anything from a camera like that would get thrown right out of court."

He shoved those fake photos with the azaleas back in front of me, still going. "We've got plenty of photos. This is our evidence. You think you can shake down the management company? Not a chance."

The two of them tag-teamed me, and just like that, everything was my fault.

Mr. Kendrick sat back down, pulled a fresh copy of the liability waiver from his desk drawer, and pushed it across to me with two fingers.

"Illegally obtained evidence is worthless." He picked up his glass and gave the scotch a slow swirl.

"Sign it. Otherwise I'll have legal sue you for invasion of privacy and take everything you own."

I didn't say a word. I just smirked, reached over, and snatched my phone back. Right in front of both of them, I opened the cloud app, saved the video, backed it up, and encrypted it.

"We'll let the police decide what's legal."

Then I dialed 911.

Mr. Kendrick's eye twitched. But he didn't try to stop me. Instead, looking perfectly unbothered, he pulled out his own phone and dialed a number.

"Hey, Mr. Parsons. Yeah, it's me." He put it on speaker deliberately.

"The family of that woman who got hit by the tree won't cooperate with mediation—real hostile attitude.

"Right, and about the incident report and the accident certification, we can't sign off on any of that from our end. This falls under personal negligence."

A man's voice came through the speaker, someone from the district office, dripping with bureaucratic formality. "If liability hasn't been determined, just hold off on the paperwork for now."

Mr. Kendrick hung up and looked at me with a smirk. "Go ahead, call the cops. Without my signature on that incident report, your mother's insurance won't cover a single cent."

Right then, my phone buzzed. It was the hospital billing department.

"Is this the family for the patient in bed 3? You need to come in and pay right now." The nurse's voice was urgent.

"Without an incident report from the property manager, the system can't process the insurance claim. Everything goes to out-of-pocket. The deposit in your account has already been used up, and we've had to pause her medication because of the outstanding balance."

A second later, a billing notice popped up on my phone for 48,000 dollars, and that was just for the first four hours of emergency surgery.

My knuckles went white around the phone.

Mr. Kendrick leaned back in his chair and laughed out loud. "Go pay your bills, son. When you run out of money, come back and beg me to sign."