CHAPTER 6 — The Brother Everyone Trusted
The basement felt colder than winter.
Michael quietly closed the steel door behind him.
Click.
Locked.
Amelia stared at him.
"You knew."
Michael sighed.
"I found those tapes six years ago."
"You told no one?"
"I couldn't."
"Why?"
He laughed bitterly.
"Because Father had another heart attack that week."
"If I exposed Mother..."
"...it would've destroyed him."
Amelia stepped closer.
"So you protected the lie."
"I protected what's left of this family."
"No."
"You protected the money."
Michael didn't deny it.
Instead...
He handed Amelia another envelope.
Inside were bank statements.
Adoption payments.
Private investigators' reports.
Monthly transfers made for twenty-five years.
Every payment came from...
Richard Whitmore.
Amelia frowned.
"My father paid for me?"
Michael nodded.
"He never knew where the money went."
"Mother convinced him private investigators were still searching for you."
"Instead..."
"...she paid the family raising you to stay silent forever."
Amelia's knees weakened.
Richard had never stopped looking.
He had unknowingly financed the prison that kept her away.
Then Michael revealed something even worse.
"The couple who raised you..."
"They didn't die naturally."
Amelia looked up sharply.
"What?"
Michael slid one final document across the table.
A coroner's report.
Both adoptive parents...
Poisoned.
Time of death...
Exactly three weeks before Amelia received their inheritance.
Someone had wanted them silent.
Someone who knew Amelia was coming home.
The basement lights suddenly went out.
Complete darkness.
Then a gun clicked somewhere in the room.
A calm voice whispered...
"You should have stayed lost."
May you like
A shot rang through the darkness.
To Be Continued..
