The grief was still there, a constant, dull ache in her chest, but today it was sharpened by a different, more volatile emotion: dread.

She knew he was coming. Her brother, Gavin, would not miss this opportunity. He wouldn’t come to mourn their mother; he would come to desecrate her memory with his rage.

The scene from the lawyer’s office six months prior was burned into her memory, a high-definition horror film playing on a loop in her mind. The stuffy, wood-paneled room, the dry rustle of paper as the family lawyer, Mr. Abernathy, had read the last will and testament.

Anna had been named the sole inheritor of the family home and the majority of their mother’s considerable estate. Gavin, in contrast, was granted a small, strictly-controlled trust fund, with clauses tied to maintaining stable employment and, most tellingly, a stipulation that any act of aggression or harassment toward his sister would immediately void the agreement entirely.