CHAPTER 4 — The Daughter They Buried Alive
Emily stared at the screen, unable to speak.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
Her mother had always told her Eleanor was her grandmother.
But Eleanor’s recording continued.
“Twenty-four years ago, I gave birth to a daughter in secret. My husband was dead. My sons were greedy. And I knew if they learned the truth, they would destroy her before she could inherit anything.”
Emily’s knees nearly gave out.
“So I hid you under another name,” Eleanor said. “I let the world believe you were my granddaughter.”
Richard’s voice suddenly echoed from the hallway.
“Enough!”
He stood at the library door with a gun in his trembling hand.
Everyone screamed.
Richard pointed it at Emily.
“You were never supposed to exist.”
Emily backed away, clutching the flash drive.
Richard stepped closer.
“That old woman ruined everything. And now you will too.”
But before he could pull the trigger, the grandfather clock behind him opened from the inside.
A man stepped out.
Old.
Scarred.
Alive.
Emily recognized him from the photographs in the chest.
Eleanor’s supposedly dead husband.
Her father.
Richard turned pale.
The old man raised a recorder.
“I heard every word.”
Police sirens wailed outside the mansion.
Richard dropped the gun.
Emily stared at the old man as tears filled her eyes.
He looked at her and whispered:
“I’m sorry, daughter. I came back too late.”
And in that moment, Emily understood the real twist.
Her grandmother had not left her an inheritance.
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She had left her a trap.
A trap to bring every monster in the family into the light.
