Chapter 6 - why Logan needed me out of the way
It would have been comforting if Logan were simply evil. He wasn’t. He was worse in a more realistic way—entitled, humiliated, and under pressure.
Months before the incident, Andrew’s office quietly learned that Logan had taken on significant private debt through a hotel investment deal in Boston that had started collapsing. The debt did not give creditors any legal claim on the manor itself. He couldn’t mortgage Claire’s house out from under her. But the financial pressure intensified his obsession with liquidity and control. He wanted parts of the estate sold, certain maintenance reserves reduced, and future distributions accelerated. Claire opposed all three.
Ryan’s motives were less urgent financially and more dependent psychologically. He had never built a stable identity outside the family orbit. Logan’s certainty gave him something to stand inside. If Logan said Claire was arrogant, Ryan found proof. If Logan said the manor was being “held hostage” by sentiment, Ryan repeated it to anyone who would listen.
Neither brother needed a magical inheritance twist to justify the violence.
The real threat was already enough.
If Andrew’s petition went forward and a forensic review began, Logan’s attempts to pressure the estate into financially convenient decisions would come under scrutiny. Ryan’s unauthorized access to company systems might surface. Their influence over staff would shrink overnight. Claire would still not own everything. But she would become much harder to corner, discredit, or outvote in practical matters.
Logan knew that.
He also knew that if Claire were suddenly injured, emotionally unstable, or otherwise perceived as unable to manage the estate, he could try to argue for temporary emergency control of certain decisions through the management company. Not permanent ownership. Control. Enough to breathe. Enough to maneuver. Enough to stop whatever was about to expose him.
When Claire told Detective Ellison that the conflict was really about control, not just money, the detective nodded.
“Control is often what people get violent over when they can’t legally get what they want another way.”
That was Logan.
A man who could not bear hearing no from a system his mother intentionally designed without him at the center.
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And Ryan had backed him right up to the edge.
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