Begin reading Chapter Two now...

I pressed my back against the log wall, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The man moving through the yard moved with a terrifying, practiced efficiency. His flashlight beam swept through the darkness, cutting through the heavy rain.

I peeked through the corner of the lace curtain. The man was dressed in an expensive trench coat, his face obscured by a low-brimmed hat. He carried a heavy leather duffel bag over his shoulder.

Why was someone at Blackwood Cabin on the exact night I arrived? There was no way Daniel or Vanessa could have tracked me here—I hadn't even brought a GPS-enabled phone, and the house deed was registered under Blackwood Holdings, a entity completely disconnected from my legal name.

Unless someone was watching the cabin long before I decided to sell the lake house.

I heard the loud metallic screech of the shed door being forced open. The man stepped inside.

Realizing I only had minutes before he realized the cabin was occupied—or worse, before he finished searching the shed and moved to the house—I tiptoed back to the oak table in the dark, grabbed Thomas’s journal, and tucked it into my coat. I grabbed my car keys and slipped quietly out the kitchen back door, creeping along the shadow of the porch.

I reached my sedan, unlocked it silently using the mechanical key, and slid into the driver's seat. I didn't turn on the headlights or start the engine immediately. I released the emergency brake and let the car roll backward down the sloped gravel driveway in complete darkness, guided only by the dim moonlight filtering through the storm clouds.

Once I reached the main road half a mile down, I started the ignition and slammed my foot on the accelerator.

I drove aimlessly through the mountain roads for an hour, my mind racing in overdrive. The world I thought I knew—my quiet widowhood, my ungrateful son, my domestic betrayals—had dissolved into a terrifying labyrinth of secrets.

I needed answers. I pulled into an all-night diner off Highway 421, ordered a black coffee, and opened Thomas's journal under the dim neon lights of a corner booth.

I turned to the entries from 2014, the year Thomas died of a sudden, aggressive heart attack.

“March 12, 2014:

The chest pains are getting worse, but I can't go to the hospital yet. Vanessa has been snooping around the basement. She thinks I don't notice her checking the floorboards near the wine cellar. She found the old blueprint from 1972. She asked Daniel why the square footage on the county tax record doesn't match the foundation map.

Daniel brushed it off, but Vanessa didn't. She’s smart. She’s ruthless. She thinks there’s money hidden in the walls. If she keeps digging, she’s going to hit the concrete vault beneath the furnace. She’s going to find the documents from the Miller Trust.

If Margaret ever finds out that Daniel isn't my biological son—that I adopted him after the accident to protect Miller’s legacy—it will destroy her memory of us. But more than that, Miller’s real heirs will come claiming what's under the house. They will stop at nothing.”

The coffee cup trembled in my hand. I stared at the words until they blurred.

Thomas wasn't Daniel's biological father. Daniel was the child of Old Man Miller—a notorious, wealthy real estate tycoon who had mysteriously disappeared in the early 1970s amid allegations of bank fraud and land theft.