For a long moment, Uncle Eric didn’t speak. His gaze dropped to the blanket folded across his lap, his hands slowly curling into it as if anchoring himself to the present.
“A newborn,” he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. “He murdered a newborn child.”
Annie reached for his hand. “Yes.”
The word hung between them, heavy with everything it contained—grief, horror, the weight of a century built on blood.
“That man stole an entire life,” Eric said. “Two lives. And then he stole everything that came after.”
Annie slid Eleanor’s will into his hands. “When Eleanor realized she and her son were in danger, she wrote this. She left everything to her daughters—Mary and Joy. She stated clearly,in her own words, that Richard Mitchell had no legitimate claim to the Blackwood estate.”
Uncle Eric adjusted his glasses and began to read. Annie watched his face as he followed the lines, saw grief give way to stunned comprehension, saw the moment when meaning finally crystallized.
“This means…” he began.
Agent Chen spoke quietly. “Mr. Whitaker, based on Eleanor Blackwood’s will, the financial records she preserved, and what our forensic accountants have traced through the Mitchell empire, you are the rightful heir to the Blackwood estate.”
He looked up sharply. “Heir?”
“To the businesses, the properties, the trust holdings,” Agent Chen continued. “Our current estimate places the value between sixty and seventy million dollars.”
The words sounded unreal even to Annie, and she’d already heard them twice.
Eric stared at them. “Sixty million dollars,” he repeated, faintly.
“The Blackwood operations expanded significantly after Richard Mitchell took control,” Agent Chen explained. “Mining interests. Timber. Commercial real estate. Investments. Generational portfolios. It was built carefully, legally on the surface, but fueled underneath by laundering, extortion, and organized crime partnerships. Now that the fraud has been exposed, those assets revert to their rightful ownership.”
“To you,” Annie said gently.
Uncle Eric leaned back against his pillows, shaking his head once, slowly. “I taught sophomore history for thirty-seven years. My idea of wealth is a paid-off mortgage and a working furnace.”
“And you did more good with that than most people ever do with fortunes,” Annie said.
He was quiet again, absorbing the magnitude of what they were telling him—not just the money, but the legacy, the violence that had made it possible, the responsibility that now sat where ignorance once had.
“What happens to the Mitchell family?” he asked.
“Sarah Mitchell will probably spend the rest of her life in federal prison,” Agent Chen replied. “Her organization is being dismantled. Assets are frozen. Shell companies are being unraveled. The legitimate businesses will continue operating under court-appointed management until ownership is formally transferred.”
“To me,” Eric said again, almost to himself.
“To you,” Agent Chen confirmed. “Or to whatever legal structure you choose to establish.”
He looked down at Eleanor’s will once more, then back at Annie. “I don’t know how to run companies. I don’t want to run companies.”
“You don’t have to,” Annie said. “You can appoint boards. Create foundations. Fund scholarships. Support victims’ programs. Use it however you believe Eleanor would have wanted.”
Eric’s grip tightened slightly on the document. “What Eleanor wanted was for the truth to survive. For her children to be protected. For the damage Richard Mitchell did to stop echoing forward.”
He met Annie’s gaze, and she saw resolve settling there—not excitement, not greed, but something steadier.
“What feels right,” he continued, “is making sure her story is told. What feels right is using whatever this becomes to help people who’ve had their lives torn apart by violence. Not quietly. Not anonymously. But openly. So no one can pretend this never happened.”
Annie’s chest tightened. Even now, even faced with a fortune built on generational theft, Uncle Eric was thinking first about justice, about community, about purpose.
“There’s more,” Agent Chen said, pulling another document from her folder. “The Mitchell investigation has expanded far beyond Eleanor’s murder. We’re uncovering a century-long pattern of corruption, intimidation, and targeted violence. This inheritance isn’t just financial. It represents accountability for dozens of crimes that were buried, dismissed, or bought into silence.”
Eric nodded slowly. “Then I don’t just inherit money,” he said. “I inherit unfinished business.”
