The Aldrich Inheritance

A sealed envelope. Seven heirs. And a dead man's secrets that someone will kill to keep buried. When the patriarch of the Aldrich dynasty dies, his estranged family gathers at the decaying Ashgrove Manor for the reading of his will. Solicitor Vivian Crenshaw arrives at the salt-bitten estate with documents in hand and seven names on her lips , names that have not spoken to one another in years. The parlor has not known guests in seven years, but tonight every velvet chair will be filled by someone carrying a grievance. Bram Aldrich returns to the house that raised him and the sister, Margot, who never left it. His brother Dominic watches the proceedings with a solicitor's patience and a debtor's calculation. Cecily Aldrich clutches the memory of a father who left her nothing in life and may yet deny her in death. A young man named Jonas Pryor appears uninvited, claiming a bloodline the family refuses to acknowledge. Mrs. Halloran, the housekeeper, has kept the rooms aired and the graves tended. And then there are the Vances , Elena, and her daughter Eleanor, whose very presence in the room rewrites the will before it is read. As the lamp burns low and the wind off the sea picks up, the envelope yields its first revelation: the Aldrich fortune will pass entire and unencumbered , but only to the heir who can prove they never wanted it. One by one, the masks slip. One by one, an heir is marked. By dawn, Ashgrove Manor will hold one fewer name on the ledger. The survivors must decide whether to flee with what they have been given, or stay and claim what was always theirs , and risk becoming the next entry in the solicitor's black-bound notebook.