The River's Toll: Blood, Secrets, and the Family Business

The family's fortune comes from the river outside their door. When an outsider passes by, the father fakes a drowning; whoever dives in to save him is pulled under instead. Uncle Frank later hauls the corpse from the water and demands a reward from the victim's family. Then Frank fishes out the father's own body, and the death is ruled an accident. After the funeral, Grandpa gathers the men of the family: Frank, cousins Jimmy and Scott, and Alex. Frank reveals that a text arrived from the father's phone after midnight, hours after he died, using the family's private code for a drowning. Jimmy admits he drunkenly told the code to Tom Miller, and a new message from Tom's number repeats it. Frank takes the cousins out to search the river. They find Tom's body, but Scott is pulled up unconscious, nearly drowned in a spot he knew by heart. The family buries Tom in secret, and when Scott recovers enough to speak, terror takes hold of him.