My name is Colleen Prince, and at 68 years old, I thought I understood the true price of wealth. When you inherit an oil fortune worth $80 million, you learn that money doesn’t just talk; it screams, lies, and sometimes kills. But I never imagined that the greatest threat to my life would come wearing my son’s face and calling me “Mom.”
The Prince estate sprawled across 500 acres of prime Texas land. The mansion itself was a testament to three generations of prosperity—imposing, beautiful, and utterly lonely since my husband, Charles, died five years ago, leaving me to manage an empire I’d never wanted.
That Tuesday morning in October started like any other. I was in my study reviewing quarterly reports when I heard the familiar rumble of my son Blake’s BMW coming up the circular drive. At 35, he rarely visited without an agenda. Lately, the easy confidence of his youth had been replaced by a desperate hunger that made me uncomfortable.
“Mom,” he said, bursting into my study without knocking, his expensive suit wrinkled. “We need to talk.” I set down my reading glasses. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and there was a tremor in his hands. “I’m going to cut straight to the chase,” he said. “I need money. A lot of money.”
Here we go again. Blake’s business ventures had a history of requiring my financial intervention. “How much?” I asked.
“$100,000.” The number hung in the air between us. “It’s a tech startup, a revolutionary online marketing platform.” His words came out in a practiced rush.
“Who’s your partner?” I asked.
His eyes flickered away. “You don’t know him. He’s from California. Tech background.”
“What’s his name?”
“Mom, why does it matter?” The evasion was telling. In thirty years as a prosecutor, I’d learned to recognize the sound of lies. Blake was hiding something.
“Blake, I’ve supported your dreams generously, and none of them have succeeded. Perhaps it’s time you tried building something with your own resources.”
His face darkened. “My own resources?” he shouted. “What resources, Mom? I’m drowning here! Do you have any idea what it’s like to live in the shadow of all this?” He gestured wildly at the opulent study. “Everyone expects me to be successful because I’m a Prince, but how can I compete when you control everything?”
“I need that money, and I need it now. This isn’t a request, Mom. It’s a necessity. Give me the money. You’ll soon die anyway.”
I felt my blood chill. This wasn’t the petulant demand of a spoiled child; this was a threat. “The answer is no, Blake.”
He stood up so abruptly his chair rocked backward. The cold calculation in his eyes terrified me. “I’ll figure it out myself,” he said without turning around. As his BMW roared down the driveway, I sat alone, feeling like I’d just dodged a bullet I didn’t understand.
Two days later, Blake returned with his wife, Skyler. I knew immediately this wasn’t a social visit. This felt calculated. Skyler was beautiful in that sharp, expensive way that required considerable maintenance. Blake and Skyler had been married for three years, but I never felt comfortable around her. There was something theatrical about her, like she was always playing a role.
“Colleen, I hope you don’t mind us dropping by,” she said as she glided into my kitchen, carrying two steaming cups of coffee. “I made this just for you,” she continued, extending one of the cups. “It’s a special blend I picked up downtown.”
The coffee smelled wrong. Not bad, exactly, but sharp and bitter, with an underlying chemical odor that reminded me of almonds. Every nerve in my body was screaming. Blake lingered by the doorway, refusing to meet my eyes.
“How thoughtful of you, dear,” I said, accepting the cup. Skyler was watching me with a predatory intensity.
As she turned slightly to glance at Blake, I made a split-second decision. Using that moment of distraction, I quickly switched our cups. They were identical, and the exchange took less than two seconds.
We chatted about meaningless things while I pretended to sip my coffee and watched Skyler take her first real drink. Her face twisted slightly, but she said nothing. Twenty minutes later, she started coughing. It began as a small clearing of her throat but quickly escalated into deep, violent spasms. Her face flushed, then took on a grayish pallor.
“Something’s wrong,” she gasped, her voice becoming hoarse. “I can’t breathe properly.”
Blake rushed over, his concern appearing genuine, or at least well-acted. “Skyler, what’s happening?”
“Hospital,” she wheezed. “Need to go to the hospital. Now.”
As we rushed to the emergency room, one thought kept repeating in my mind: that coffee had been meant for me. Which meant my loving daughter-in-law had just poisoned herself with her own murder weapon.
The emergency room was controlled chaos. Skyler’s condition was dramatic enough to get immediate attention. “We need help!” Blake called out. “My wife can’t breathe.”
Within minutes, she was on a gurney, hooked up to monitors. “When did the symptoms start?” the doctor asked.
“About thirty minutes ago,” Blake answered smoothly. “She was fine, then suddenly started coughing.”
The doctor followed Skyler’s gaze to me. “Are you family?”
“I’m her mother-in-law. We were having coffee when she became ill.”
Three hours later, Blake returned from a trip home to get Skyler’s things. His timing was impeccable. He walked through the door just as the doctor emerged. “We found traces of cyanide in her bloodstream,” she announced. “This appears to be deliberate poisoning. I’m required by law to contact the authorities.”
Cyanide. The word hung in the air. Blake’s face went pale. “Poisoning? But how? Who would do something like that?”
Before the doctor could answer, Skyler’s voice rang out from behind the curtain, weak but remarkably clear. “She did it,” she said, her finger pointing directly at me. “Colleen poisoned my coffee. She tried to kill me.”
Detective James Morrison arrived within thirty minutes. He was younger than I expected, with sharp eyes that missed nothing. He took me to a small consultation room.
“I want to be clear from the start,” he began. “You’re not under arrest. But I need to understand what happened.”
I told him exactly what occurred: the strange smell, my instinct to switch the cups, Skyler drinking what was meant for me.
“Mrs. Prince,” he said, “if you suspected the coffee was dangerous, why didn’t you simply refuse to drink it or warn her?”
“I wasn’t certain,” I said. “It was more of an instinct. I thought switching the cups would be a way to test my concerns without creating drama if I was wrong.”
When Detective Morrison interviewed Blake, I could hear their conversation through the thin walls. “My mother’s been acting strange lately,” Blake said. “Paranoid, suspicious of everyone. She’s been making comments about gold diggers and people who marry for money.”
Each word was a carefully placed knife in my back. Blake was painting a picture of a paranoid, controlling old woman who might poison her daughter-in-law out of jealousy.
The search of my home was thorough. They found a small glass vial hidden behind the medicine cabinet in the guest bathroom. Beside it was a handwritten list with Skyler’s name and what appeared to be dosage calculations.
“Mrs. Prince,” Detective Morrison said, holding up the evidence bag, “can you explain these items?”
“I’ve never seen them before,” I said, my voice distant. The handwriting looked remarkably similar to mine.
“Are you suggesting your son planted this evidence?”
“Someone with access to my house could have placed these items here while we were at the hospital.” But I could see the doubt in his eyes.
“Mrs. Prince,” he said after the search, “based on the evidence we’ve gathered, I’m placing you under arrest for attempted murder.”
As the handcuffs clicked around my wrists, I looked at my lawyer, Marcus, and saw my own fears reflected in his eyes. Blake and Skyler had played this perfectly. But as they led me away, one thought kept me from despair. They’d made one crucial mistake. They’d left me alive.
The county jail was everything I’d expected and worse. The bail hearing was set for Monday. Marcus was confident, but the prosecution argued I was a flight risk.
“Harrison found something big,” he said quietly during a visit, referring to my private investigator. “Skyler Morrison doesn’t exist.”
I felt my pulse quicken. “What do you mean?”
“The identity is fake. Her real name is Victoria Sterling, and she has a criminal record in three states. Identity theft, fraud, and suspected involvement in the suspicious death of an elderly man in Arizona.”
Suddenly, everything made sense. Blake hadn’t just married a beautiful woman; he’d married a professional criminal.
“So this was planned from the beginning?”
“It looks that way. But here’s the motive. Three months ago, you updated your will to establish a charitable foundation instead of leaving everything to Blake. If you died today, he would inherit nothing.”
“He knows about the will change?”
“Yes. He called your attorney’s office about six weeks ago.”
The complexity of their plan was staggering. They hadn’t just tried to kill me; they’d tried to destroy my reputation so Blake could contest the will on grounds of my mental incompetence.
Bail was set at $2 million. As I was processed for release, Marcus pulled me aside. “Harrison found something else. Victoria Sterling’s real name is Rebecca Martinez, and she’s wanted by the FBI for a string of similar crimes across multiple states.”
“The FBI?”
“She’s been running this scam for over a decade. Elderly victims in four states. Always the same pattern: marry into money, kill the spouse, inherit the wealth.” She wasn’t just a con artist; she was a serial killer.
“Where is she now?”
“That’s the problem. After your arrest, both Blake and Victoria disappeared.”
That evening, I sat in my study with an electronic monitoring bracelet around my ankle, a prisoner in my own home. The media attention was overwhelming. Blake was giving orchestrated statements to reporters, painting himself as the tragic son of a mentally unstable mother. But he made a mistake: the interview was conducted at a local hotel, meaning they hadn’t fled as far as we thought.
“Marcus,” I said on the phone, “I want to end this. It’s time to go on the offensive. I want to set a trap. Use myself as bait.”
“Colleen, that’s incredibly dangerous.”
“That’s exactly what I’m counting on.”
The leak was carefully orchestrated. By the next morning, rumors were circulating that I had discovered evidence proving my innocence and was planning to present it to authorities within 48 hours. If Blake and Victoria thought I had evidence, they would have to act quickly. All I had to do was wait.
On the third night, they took the bait. The motion sensors detected movement near the back of the house. Blake appeared first, slipping through the French doors. Victoria followed, carrying a small medical bag. They moved through my house like they owned it, searching for evidence that didn’t exist.
“We need to find her,” I heard Victoria say. “Make her tell us where it is. And then… then we finish what we started.”
They found me exactly where I wanted them to, sitting in my study, my back to the door. Blake entered first. “Hello, Mother.”
I turned slowly, letting surprise and fear show on my face. “Blake, what are you doing here?”
“We need to talk,” he said, while Victoria blocked the door. “About the evidence you think you have.”
Victoria stepped forward, holding a syringe. “Mrs. Prince, we know you have something. Tell us where it is, and this will be quick and painless.” The mask was off. This was Rebecca Martinez, professional killer.
“There is no evidence,” I said, letting my voice shake. “I made it up.”
Victoria studied my face. “She’s telling the truth. There is no evidence.”
“Then why are we here?” Blake asked.
Victoria smiled, the most terrifying expression I’d ever seen. “Because now we know for certain she doesn’t have anything on us. Which means we can finish this properly.”
She raised the syringe, and I saw my death reflected in her cold eyes. “Wait,” I said. “Before you kill me, I need to know. Was any of it real? Did Blake ever actually love me, or was this always about the money?”
Blake’s face twisted. “Mom, I—”
“He loves your money,” Victoria cut him off. “Just like I do. Just like everyone who’s ever pretended to care about you.”
It was the cruelest thing she could have said and exactly what I needed her to say. “Thank you,” I said quietly. “For telling me the truth.”
Her confusion lasted just long enough for the FBI agents to crash through every entrance to my study. “FBI! Hands where we can see them!”
The arrest was swift. As they read Blake and Victoria their rights, I sat in my chair and watched my son’s life implode. “You set us up,” he said.
“You tried to murder me,” I replied. “I just returned the favor.”
Six months later, I sat in a federal courtroom watching Rebecca Martinez receive four consecutive life sentences. The evidence against her was overwhelming. Blake received 25 years for conspiracy to commit murder and fraud. As they led him away, he looked at me with something between hatred and disbelief. I felt nothing but cold satisfaction.
My new will brings me daily satisfaction, knowing that every penny of my fortune will go to the Prince Animal Welfare Foundation. Blake will inherit nothing except the knowledge that his greed cost him everything. This morning, I received a letter from him, full of apologies and desperate pleas. I read it twice, then fed it into my fireplace. Some betrayals are too deep for forgiveness. As I sit here in my study, looking out at the oil derricks that have provided for three generations, I feel something I haven’t experienced in months: peace.