As night settled over the house, the silence felt heavier than usual. Shadows stretched across the walls like living things, curling around corners and creeping into my thoughts. My mind wouldn’t stop replaying the messages. The possibility that Richard—a man I had spent nearly thirty years of my life with—might still be alive was both exhilarating and horrifying. But the warning not to trust our own children chilled me to the core.
Moving quietly through the house, I paused outside Natalie’s and Andrew’s rooms. Their soft, even breathing should have been comforting, but instead it raised more questions. Could they really be keeping something from me? The thought felt like a betrayal, but the cryptic texts left me no choice but to dig deeper.
I slipped into Richard’s study, a place that had once been a haven of warmth and routine but now felt like foreign ground. The scent of leather and old books was familiar, yet the air carried an edge of unease. At the desk where Richard had spent countless hours, I reached for the top drawer with trembling hands.
It opened smoothly, revealing neat rows of pens and notepads. But beneath the false bottom—a hidden compartment I’d never noticed—lay something far more startling: a bundle of papers tied with a red ribbon.
