Chapter 5
Police surrounded my father’s old lake property before midnight.
I wasn’t allowed near it.
Hannah insisted I stay at a secure hotel.
Gabriel stayed with me.
The ruins looked harmless in old photographs.
Burned beams.
Collapsed stone.
Trees growing through what used to be the kitchen.
But beneath the remains, investigators found a steel door.
Locked.
Sabrina was gone.
She had reached the property before police.
Then disappeared.
“She got inside?” I asked Hannah over video.
“We think so.”
“Then follow her.”
“We’re trying.”
The underground structure wasn’t on modern plans.
Christian’s father had apparently designed it in secret.
Christian agreed to help investigators in exchange for nothing.
For once.
He gave them an old access code.
It worked.
The steel door opened.
Inside was a staircase.
Then a recording studio preserved almost perfectly beneath the ruins.
Tape machines.
Hard drives.
Locked cabinets.
Photographs.
My father’s handwriting covered dozens of storage boxes.
I started crying.
Twelve years after his death, it felt like discovering a hidden part of him.
Then Hannah found blood on the floor.
Not much.
But fresh.
“Sabrina?”
“We don’t know.”
A side door stood open.
Beyond it was a tunnel leading toward the lake.
Sabrina had escaped again.
But she hadn’t taken everything.
One cabinet had been forced open.
Inside were hundreds of recordings.
Daniel brought several back for review.
One contained my father speaking with Victor Lang.
The recording was fourteen years old.
Victor sounded frightened.
“They’re using artists as collateral.”
My father answered.
“Then we expose them.”
“Jonathan, you don’t understand how high this goes.”
“I understand theft.”
“This isn’t only theft.”
Then another voice entered.
Christian’s father.
Damian Vale.
“We shut this down now.”
I froze.
Christian’s father had been helping mine.
Not working against him.
The recording continued.
Victor said:
“If Sabrina learns what we’re doing, she’ll destroy us.”
Gabriel looked at me.
“How old was Sabrina?”
“Early twenties.”
She had been involved far earlier than anyone realized.
Then my father said something strange.
“Emma can never know who funded the archive.”
My heart tightened.
Victor replied.
“She deserves the truth eventually.”
“No.”
My father’s voice became firm.
“If Emma learns who her mother really was, she’ll become a target.”
I stopped breathing.
“My mother?”
Gabriel stared at me.
My mother, Julia Reed, died when I was six.
Cancer.
That was what I had always been told.
Daniel immediately searched old records.
Julia Reed had no hospital death certificate.
No oncology records.
No burial permit under that name.
My entire childhood shifted beneath me.
“What does that mean?”
Hannah answered carefully.
“We don’t know yet.”
Then another recording began automatically.
A woman’s voice filled the room.
My father said:
“Julia, you cannot keep meeting Sabrina.”
I froze.
The woman answered.
“She’s my daughter.”
Silence.
Gabriel slowly turned toward me.
I stared at the speakers.
My father continued:
“Emma is your daughter too.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Sabrina.
My father’s enemy.
Christian’s secret partner.
Victor Lang’s wife.
The woman who had helped destroy my pregnancies.
Was my sister.
My mother had another daughter before me.
Daniel immediately began tracing records.
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
Sabrina.
A photograph appeared.
She stood beside an older woman.
Gray hair.
Thin face.
Alive.
I recognized her from childhood photographs.
My mother.
Julia.
May you like
Under the picture, Sabrina had written:
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY MOM CHOSE ME.
