CHAPTER 7: The Man Everyone Buried Was Still Alive
Lightning split the night sky.
Emma stared at the forged contract, her hands shaking.
"The man buried in Grandpa's grave... wasn't him?"
Alexander Ashford slowly nodded.
"I saw his body with my own eyes twenty-five years ago."
"So did I," the lawyer whispered.
Alexander looked directly at him.
"No."
"You saw a body."
"Not his."
Silence swallowed the cabin.
Emma's mother collapsed into a chair.
"This is impossible..."
Alexander opened another confidential file.
"I never stopped investigating after your grandfather disappeared."
"For years, every clue ended the same way."
"Someone erased every witness."
Every page revealed another suspicious death.
The doctor who signed the death certificate.
Dead.
The coroner.
Dead.
The detective assigned to the missing-person case.
Dead.
Even the priest who conducted the funeral had vanished six months later.
Emma's stomach turned.
"This wasn't a family secret..."
"It was a conspiracy."
Alexander nodded.
"One that has lasted nearly three decades."
Just then, one of the security officers rushed into the cabin.
"Sir!"
"We've intercepted a satellite phone call."
Alexander answered immediately.
"Patch it through."
Static filled the room.
Then...
An old man's calm voice echoed from the speaker.
"I wondered how long it would take before you found the contract."
Everyone froze.
Emma's heart pounded.
She recognized the voice.
Not because she had heard it before...
But because it sounded exactly like the recordings her grandfather had left for her as a child.
Alexander whispered,
"...Richard?"
The voice chuckled.
"So you finally remembered me."
Emma stepped closer to the phone.
"Who are you?"
The man laughed softly.
"I'm the only person who knows why your family was destroyed."
Emma's voice trembled.
"Are you... my grandfather?"
There was a long silence.
Then came the answer.
"No."
"I'm the man who saved him."
The room fell completely silent.
Alexander gripped the table.
"What have you done with Richard?"
The stranger replied calmly.
"He has been alive all these years."
Emma burst into tears.
"Then where is he?"
The stranger ignored her question.
Instead, he said something that made everyone's blood run cold.
"If you want to see him alive..."
"Come alone."
"No police."
"No security."
"No Alexander."
"Midnight."
He named an abandoned island located in the middle of a forgotten lake.
"If anyone follows you..."
"You'll never find his body."
The line went dead.
The room remained frozen.
The lawyer immediately shouted,
"It's a trap!"
Alexander agreed.
"I won't let you go."
But Emma slowly wiped away her tears.
"If my grandfather is alive..."
"I've already lost twenty-five years."
"I'm not losing another day."
As everyone argued, no one noticed Isabella.
Handcuffed in the back of the security vehicle...
She slowly smiled.
Because the anonymous caller wasn't asking Emma to come.
He was luring everyone into the final stage of a plan that had been prepared for thirty years.
Miles away...
Inside a massive underground bunker hidden beneath the abandoned island...
An elderly man watched Emma through dozens of surveillance screens.
His white hair covered part of his face.
His hands trembled with age.
He reached toward an old family photograph.
A single tear rolled down his cheek.
Then he whispered words that no one else could hear.
"Forgive me, Emma..."
"I let them believe I was dead..."
"...because the real traitor has been standing beside you from the very beginning."
The security camera slowly turned.
Standing silently in the corner of the bunker...
May you like
Was Alexander Ashford's own son.
And he smiled as if Emma had already walked into the trap.
