Chapter 6 - The Unraveling Threads-6
I stepped out of the diner into the chilling pre-dawn rain. My mind was a battlefield of conflicting emotions.
Part of me—the hurt, broken mother who had been discarded via a callous text message—wanted to get into my car, drive to the coast, and never look back. Daniel was not my blood. He had treated me with cold disrespect, viewing me as nothing more than a bank account to fund his wife's ambitions. He had allowed Vanessa to kick me out of a family vacation while expecting me to foot the bill for his children's entertainment.
Why should I risk my life for a man who didn't even view me as family?
Because you raised him, a quiet, steady voice inside me answered. You sang him to sleep when he had night terrors. You held his hand when he broke his arm. You loved him for thirty years.
Whether his biology came from Thomas or a dead crook named Miller, the soul of the boy I raised was built by my hands. And I wasn't going to let Claire Morrison destroy him for a bag of fifty-year-old stolen bonds.
I sat in my car, flipped to the back pages of Thomas’s journal, and began inspecting the leather binding.
I ran my thumbs along the inside cover. There was a faint ridge near the spine. Taking a small nail file from my purse, I sliced carefully along the seam.
Inside the hidden pocket sat a flat, brass key with a intricate pattern of grooves, accompanied by a small piece of folded parchment.
On the parchment, Thomas had written a short string of numbers and a message:
“35-12-88. The vault doesn't contain money, Margaret. Miller was broke when he died. The vault contains the evidence that exposed the county corruption ring in 1972—and the real identity of the woman who ordered Miller’s murder. If you are reading this, Claire has come for it. Do not give her the key. Use the numbers on the cellar floor.”
My breath hitched.
Miller wasn't hiding wealth in the vault. He was hiding indictments. He was hiding the truth about a powerful syndicate that had seized thousands of acres of mountain land through fraud and violence—a syndicate that Claire Morrison was still operating under the guise of Blackwood Securities.
Claire wasn't looking for money. She was looking to destroy the evidence that could put her and her corporate syndicate in prison forever.
May you like
And she was using Daniel as leverage.
I started the engine. I wasn't going to the old timber mill to surrender. I was going back to Charlotte—to the house I had just sold—to finish what Thomas had started thirty years ago.
