Chapter 2 - THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
I had always been told Davis Heritage Masonry belonged to my father.
The company began with my grandmother, Evelyn Davis.
She inherited a small brickmaking yard from her father, expanded it into a commercial masonry supplier, and later bought twelve acres near the Scioto River.
By the time I was born, the company provided stone, brick, and concrete materials for schools, hospitals, apartment complexes, and public buildings across central Ohio.
Grandma Evelyn was not gentle.
She fired people who lied to customers.
She returned checks when contractors overpaid.
She expected family members to start at the warehouse instead of receiving office titles.
When I was fourteen, she made me spend one summer recording damaged inventory in a building without air conditioning.
Melanie lasted three days.
Dad said Grandma favored me because I enjoyed dirty work.
Mom said I manipulated old people by pretending to care about their stories.
When Grandma died during my sophomore year of college, my father told us the company had been left entirely to him.
He said both daughters would receive something “eventually.”
Eventually became a word that ended questions.
Wyatt discovered the problem because his company had once planned a development near the Davis property.
Although he sold Campbell Construction the previous year, he retained several investments and reviewed potential projects privately.
One parcel beside the old masonry yard appeared valuable for mixed-income housing.
Gregory told him Davis Family Holdings owned it.
Wyatt’s attorney found a conflicting reference in an old probate index.
The record mentioned a testamentary transfer to:
SADIE ELIZABETH DAVIS, SUBJECT TO AGE-BASED VOTING TRUST.
The document itself was missing from the public file.
My father said the reference was a clerical mistake.
Then he became obsessed with convincing Wyatt to invest in a redevelopment partnership controlled by Melanie.
When Wyatt refused, Melanie began appearing everywhere.
At his gym.
His office.
Our coffee shop.
Outside our apartment.
She sent photographs.
Invitations.
Messages about how I lacked the ambition to understand a successful man.
Wyatt blocked her.
My parents called him disrespectful.
Three days before the attack, his attorney located Elias Hart.
Hart had retired from law fifteen years earlier and lived in a senior community outside Dayton.
He had drafted Grandma Evelyn’s estate plan.
Wyatt left him a message.
Elias never returned the call.
Now his pen was beneath my parents’ porch swing.
Detective Brooks requested an immediate search for him.
Officers returned to the house with a warrant based on the violent assault, the unidentified witness, and evidence that my parents had lied about who was present.
The living room was empty.
But a teacup remained warm beside the window.
An oxygen concentrator stood behind the sofa.
A leather document case sat beneath the piano.
Elias’s driver’s license was inside.
So was a photocopy of Grandma Evelyn’s will.
The original was not there.
The back door stood open.
A neighbor reported seeing Melanie drive away in her white SUV eleven minutes before police returned.
A statewide alert went out.
Elias was found two hours later at a gas station twenty miles east of Columbus.
He had entered the store alone and asked the clerk to call police.
Melanie’s SUV was discovered abandoned behind a closed garden center.
She was arrested at a friend’s apartment the following morning.
Elias had a bruised wrist and dangerously low blood sugar.
He refused hospitalization until officers told him I was alive.
Then he began crying.
Detective Brooks interviewed him on video from the emergency department.
He explained that my father had called three days earlier.
Gregory claimed Wyatt was pressuring the family over false inheritance allegations.
He asked Elias to come to Columbus and correct the misunderstanding.
When Elias arrived, my mother took his phone.
They placed documents in front of him.
One was an affidavit stating Grandma had revoked her final will and replaced it with a handwritten document leaving everything to Gregory.
Elias refused to sign.
“I told them Evelyn had never revoked the will I prepared,” he said.
“What happened then?” Detective Brooks asked.
“Gregory became angry. Brenda said they only needed me to confirm that Evelyn had changed her mind.”
“Had she?”
“No.”
“Where is the original will?”
Elias looked toward the camera.
“In a secure archive belonging to my former firm.”
My heart began beating faster.
“What does it say?” Brooks asked.
Elias closed his eyes.
“Evelyn left Gregory forty-nine percent of the voting shares in Davis Heritage Masonry.”
“And the remainder?”
“Fifty-one percent to Sadie.”
I stared at the hospital ceiling.
The company my father claimed belonged entirely to him did not.
Elias continued.
“The twelve-acre river parcel passed into a separate trust for Sadie. She was to receive direct control at twenty-five.”
I was thirty-one.
Nobody had contacted me.
“What did Melanie receive?” the detective asked.
“A cash trust funded with insurance, investment accounts, and a condominium.”
Melanie had lived in that condominium for eight years.
My parents described it as a gift.
They never said it was inheritance.
Grandma had provided for both of us.
My family concealed my share because mine included control.
“Why wasn’t the original will admitted to probate?” Detective Brooks asked.
Elias swallowed.
“I believed it had been.”
After Grandma’s death, Gregory presented Elias’s office with a letter saying the family had retained different probate counsel.
A handwritten will appeared in court.
It left the company and land to Gregory.
Elias never saw the filing because he suffered a stroke shortly afterward and retired.
His junior partner assumed the family had changed representation.
The handwritten will carried Grandma’s supposed signature.
Elias saw a copy years later and suspected forgery, but Gregory said a settlement had resolved all beneficiary issues.
“I should have contacted Sadie,” Elias said.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I allowed illness, retirement, and uncertainty to become excuses.”
His voice broke.
“Yesterday, they wanted me to certify the forgery because Wyatt’s lawyers had found the old index entry.”
“Did you witness the assault?”
“Yes.”
Elias had been standing behind the curtain when our car arrived.
He heard Melanie say:
“If Wyatt won’t choose me, make sure he can’t recognize what he’s losing.”
Brenda replied:
“Your father will frighten her. Nothing more.”
Then Gregory lifted a loose brick from the garden border.
Elias tried to reach the front door.
Brenda blocked him.
He watched through the window as my father struck me.
After the ambulance left, Gregory told him:
“You saw Wyatt attack us. That is what you will say.”
Elias refused.
Melanie drove him away before police returned.
She threatened to leave him beside the highway if he did not sign the affidavit.
At the gas station, he pretended to experience chest pain.
When Melanie went inside to buy water, he locked the car doors and sounded the horn until people looked.
She fled.
Detective Brooks ended the interview and faced me.
“We have an eyewitness.”
“You have more than one,” Wyatt said.
May you like
He held up his replacement phone.
“My attorney just found a video from the house across the street.”
