I thought the worst pain of my life was saying goodbye to him. I was wrong. The true nightmare began an hour before the service, right there in the hushed, velvet-lined hallway of the funeral home.
The funeral director, a soft-spoken man named Mr. Abernathy, approached me with an apologetic wince. “Mrs. Hayes, I am so deeply sorry to disturb you at this moment. However, the final payment for the transport and the plot… your primary bank card was declined. I tried the secondary one as well. The accounts appear to be frozen.”
A cold dread coiled in my gut. “Frozen? That’s impossible. David and I made sure everything was funded last week.”
“I assure you, ma’am, the bank cited a freeze placed by the primary corporate account holder.”
My blood ran like ice water. The corporate account. David’s family owned Hayes Manufacturing, a regional empire his father, Arthur Hayes, ruled with an iron fist. David had been a junior partner, but our personal finances were supposed to be completely separate.
Before I could speak, a shadow fell over us. It was my mother-in-law, Beatrice, dressed in impeccable, expensive black silk, smelling of heavy gardenia perfume. Arthur stood half a step behind her, his face a mask of sculpted stone.
