Chapter 1 - The First Confession
The paper in my hand trembled as the lawyer, a sharply dressed man with silver-rimmed glasses who introduced himself as Marcus Vance, stepped past me into the narrow hallway of my small apartment. He didn’t wait for an invitation. He simply closed the door behind him, locking it with a sharp click that echoed in the quiet space.
"Please sit down, Mrs. Vance," he said, his voice entirely devoid of warmth.
I looked down at the name. Mrs. Vance. For ten brief days, I had been Carl’s wife. I had held his skeletal hand as he breathed his last ragged breath, listening to the soft beep of the hospice machine slow down until it flatlined. I had wept real, heavy tears. I had worn black to his funeral, standing by his gravesite while the autumn wind whipped my hair across my face, entirely alone except for the groundskeeper.
"What is this?" I managed to whisper, my voice catching in my dry throat. "What do you mean, our meeting wasn't an accident? Carl said he was just a regular patient assigned to me by the hospice."
Marcus turned around, his expression grim. "Carl lied about a lot of things. But that letter will explain the baseline. Read it. All the way to the end. Do not skip a single word, or nothing that follows will make any sense to you."
I sat down on the edge of my worn-out sofa, my eyes glued to the elegant, fountain-pen handwriting on the heavy cream-colored stationery.
“Our meeting was NOT an accident,” the letter began. “I've known you your entire life and quietly watched over you. You think you signed up for hospice volunteering by random chance. You think the coordinator placed you with Room 404 because of an open slot. Nothing in your life, Oanh, has been left to chance since the day you turned seven years old.”
My breath hitched. Seven years old. That was the year my parents died in a mysterious, fiery car crash on Route 9—a crash the police closed as a tragic accident, despite my father’s desperate, frantic phone calls to the authorities weeks prior warning them that someone was hunting him.
I forced my eyes down to the next paragraph, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
“Your father stole something that didn't belong to him. He thought he could outrun the syndicate, outrun me. He was wrong. But before I dealt with him, I made a promise to myself. I watched you grow up from the shadows. I funded your scholarships through anonymous donors. I ensured the landlord never raised your rent. I built the very cage you live in, Oanh. And then, when my time finally ran out, I engineered the one thing I needed to ensure my legacy survived: I made you my legal, lawful wife.”
The letter dropped from my trembling fingers. The apartment suddenly felt suffocatingly small. I looked up at Marcus, who was standing by the window, staring out into the street.
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"What did he mean?" I choked out, tears stinging the corners of my eyes. "Who was Carl? If he watched me, if he... if he had something to do with my parents..."
Marcus turned slowly, a cold smile touching the corners of his lips. "Carl wasn't just a dying man, Oanh. He was the head of the city's most ruthless underground syndicate. And by marrying him on his deathbed, you didn't just inherit a widower's grief. You just inherited an empire soaked in blood—and a target on your back that no one can remove."
