Chapter 3 #2
I screenshot and print every screen. Every text.
Every timestamp. I scroll back to the beginning and work forward, capturing everything in sequence, both in print and to a flash drive.
Screenshot, print, scroll, screenshot, print, scroll.
My hands are steady now. The shaking stopped.
Something in me went cold and flat and efficient, and I am grateful for it, because if I let the anger behind my sternum become anything other than fuel—if I think about Gran’s face when Sienna told her I wanted to sell the house—I will shatter this laptop against the wall and that is not the move.
I close the messages. I close the laptop. I slide the documents back into their envelope and wedge it into the back of the bottom drawer, exactly where the rails caught it before. I push the drawer closed and make sure it sticks in the same spot.
In the hallway, I lean against the wall. My flash drive is heavy in my hand, loaded with photographs of my husband’s plan to steal my grandmother’s fortune. To steal her—her trust, her love, her dignity, her final years.
I need someone who knows what to do with this. And I need them today.
Maren Alcott picks up on the second ring.
“Nora. It’s been a minute.” Her voice is warm, direct—Maren doesn’t do small talk and never has.
We met on a grants committee four years ago and stayed connected the way professional women do, lunches and referrals and the occasional drink when the world gets heavy.
What I know about Maren: she runs a consulting firm, she has impeccable taste in shoes, and eighteen months ago her husband tried to hide three million dollars in a shell company during their divorce.
She found it. She got it. He moved to Arizona.
“Maren, I need your help.”
“Tell me.”
“I need a recommendation. I’m divorcing Grant, and it’s—“ I stop. Start again. “There’s more to it than the divorce. He’s been manipulating my grandmother. He’s trying to change her will, he’s filed a fraudulent power of attorney, and he has a co-conspirator. Her nurse.”
Silence on the line. Not the uncomfortable kind—the kind where someone is recalibrating.
“How bad?” Maren asks.
“He’s trying to redirect her entire estate to himself. A hundred and twenty-five million dollars.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I have evidence. Photos, texts, documents. I need an attorney who can handle the estate side—protecting my grandmother, unwinding whatever they’ve done—and then I need a divorce attorney who will take him apart. But the estate comes first. She comes first.”
“You need Dominic Voss.”
She says it without hesitation, the way you say the name of the only person who can do the job.
“He’s not a divorce attorney,” she continues. “He’s estate litigation, elder law. But if your grandmother’s money is in play and someone is trying to manipulate her, Dominic is who you want in the room before anyone else. He doesn’t grandstand. He doesn’t bluff. He just wins.”
“Does he take cases like this?”
“Cases like this are why he got into law. Give me ten minutes—I’ll text you his direct line.”
She’s true to her word. Eight minutes later, my phone buzzes with a contact card. Dominic Voss, Voss & Hadley, LLP. I dial before I can talk myself into waiting.
His assistant answers. Professional, brisk. I give my name and say it’s urgent—an elder financial abuse matter. I’m on hold for less than a minute.
“This is Dominic Voss.” The voice is low, even, unhurried. No warmth, no chill—just attention. Like he’s already listening before I’ve said anything.
“Mr. Voss, my name is Nora Petersson. Maren Alcott gave me your number. I need help. My husband is conspiring with my grandmother’s live-in nurse to change my grandmother’s will and steal her estate.
I have evidence—texts, documents, a fraudulent power of attorney filing.
I need to protect my grandmother and I need to divorce my husband, and the grandmother part can’t wait. ”
I say it all in one breath. No hedging, no softening. I have spent weeks tiptoeing around Grant’s moods and performing for his benefit and choosing my words carefully so I don’t spook the man who’s robbing my family. I am done being careful.
The line is quiet for a moment. Not the silence of discomfort or disbelief—the silence of someone organizing information. Processing.
“Tell me about the power of attorney,” he says.
So I do. I walk him through the filing—the replacement POA naming Grant, drafted by Philip Keene, filed eleven days ago.
I tell him about the will amendment I found in Grant’s office.
I tell him about the text messages documenting the manipulation campaign, Sienna’s scripts, the systematic erosion of Gran’s trust.
He asks questions. Specific ones. Not how do you feel about this—but what’s the filing number on the POA and is the will amendment signed or in draft and how long has the nurse been employed. Every question is a scalpel, precise and purposeful, cutting straight to what matters.
I answer everything. He doesn’t interrupt.
He doesn’t rush me. He doesn’t make a sound that suggests he’s doing anything other than listening to every word I say, which is—I have to pause here, because my throat is suddenly tight—something my husband hasn’t done in months.
A man I’ve never met is giving my words more attention than the man I married.
“Mrs. Petersson.”
“Nora.”
“Nora. I want you to come in tomorrow morning. Bring everything—the photos, the screenshots, the POA filing, the will amendment, all of it. I want to see the originals, not summaries. Can you do nine o’clock?”
“I’ll be there.”
“One more thing.” A pause. When he speaks again, his voice is the same measured tone, but something underneath it has shifted—tighter, closer to the surface.
“Don’t confront your husband. Don’t confront the nurse.
Don’t tell your grandmother. I know that’s difficult, but if they know you’re aware, they’ll move faster and cover their tracks.
Right now your advantage is that they think you don’t know.
That’s the most valuable thing you have. ”
“I understand.”
“Good. I’ll see you at nine.”
The line goes dead. I set the phone on the counter and stand in my kitchen—the kitchen with the pendant lights I picked out alone, the island where I drink wine by myself, the silence that used to feel like loneliness and now feels like something else entirely.
Strategy. This silence is strategic. Every minute Grant doesn’t know what I know is a minute I’m ahead.
For the first time since I stood in Gran’s hallway and watched my marriage end—since the sound of Sienna’s voice turned my stomach and my husband’s groan split my world clean in two—I feel something other than rage.
Direction. Not a plan yet. But a direction. A name. A voice on the phone that listened like listening was the whole point.
Tomorrow, nine o’clock.
I start organizing my photos.