Chapter 6 - THE BETRAYAL AT THE LAWYER’S OFFICE (CONTINUED)
flashed with greed—and fear.
She didn’t have everything. She knew it.
I let her snatch the copies, the scrap of paper, the recorder. She crushed the device beneath her heel, then tossed the papers to Daniel like trash.
“Burn them,” she ordered. “Every page. Shred them. Make sure nothing remains.”
Daniel stared at the recorder’s broken pieces, then up at me. His eyes were terrified. Guilty. Desperate.
“Emily,” he whispered, “don’t fight her. She will kill them. She means it.”
Evelyn turned back to me, her smile sharp and triumphant.
“Now tell me where the originals are hidden. The real will. The real letter. Every last thing your father wrote. And tell me where Sarah and Noah are.”
I stood tall. My hands were empty, but my voice did not shake.
“You think you won?” I said quietly. “You killed Elias. You killed Clara. You killed my father. You killed Arthur. You took my friend. You took my son.”
I leaned forward, locking eyes with her.
“But you forgot one thing. My father didn’t trust anyone. Not even me. He hid the originals where you would never look. And he arranged for them to be delivered to three separate people if anything happened to him. If anything happened to me.”
Evelyn’s smile faltered. “Liar.”
“Am I?” I said. “He told me so himself. If I vanish… if I have an accident… every single document goes to the press. To the district attorney. To every major news outlet in the city. Everything. The truth about Noah’s birth. The truth about my father’s death. The truth about every crime you have ever committed.”
It was a gamble. A desperate, terrifying gamble. But Evelyn’s face paled. She didn’t know. She couldn’t be certain.
“You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed. “You would destroy your own son’s name.”
“I would rather Noah know the truth than be raised by a murderer,” I said. “And I would rather burn everything down than let you win.”
Silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Daniel stood frozen, staring between us. The two men beside the door shifted uneasily, glancing at each other.
Evelyn studied me, searching for the lie. She couldn’t find it. Because I meant every word.
Finally, she spoke.
“Bring her,” she said. “We will find the originals ourselves. And then we will see who delivers what to whom.”
The men stepped forward and seized my arms. They were rough, dragging me toward the door. I didn’t fight. Not yet.
Evelyn paused beside Daniel. She lowered her voice so only he could hear—but I caught the words anyway.
“Get rid of Sarah tonight. Keep the boy. No loose ends. No witnesses. Once we have those originals… we make it look like Emily fled the country. And then everything is ours.”
Daniel flinched. “Mother… we can’t kill Sarah. She’s innocent.”
Evelyn backhanded him across the face. Hard. The sound cracked through the room.
“When will you understand?” she whispered coldly. “There is no innocent. Only us. And them. And if you hesitate… you will be next.”
She turned and walked out. The men dragged me after her.
I didn’t look back at Daniel. But as I was shoved into the back of a black sedan, I saw him standing alone in the doorway, staring at his hand—the hand that had held the papers minutes ago.
And then I saw it.
He slipped something into his pocket.
A small, folded scrap.
The very corner of the real letter—the one I had kept in my palm, hidden beneath the copies, and deliberately dropped when Evelyn reached for them.
Daniel had seen it. He’d picked it up. And he hadn’t given it to her.
He’d kept it.
The car door slammed shut. We pulled away from the curb. Evelyn sat beside me in the back seat, silent and watchful.
But in that moment, as I watched the city streets blur past the window, I realized something.
Daniel was weak. He was a coward. He had stood by and let his son be humiliated. He had looked away from murder.
But he had kept that scrap.
And as I thought about the words written on that corner—the final warning my father had scrawled at the very bottom of the page—I understood.
Daniel was not an ally. But he was not entirely her son, either.
May you like
And that scrap of paper… might be the only thing capable of breaking Evelyn’s hold over him.
Or it might be the thing that gets us all killed.
