Chapter 9 - My Father’s Letter

I reached it first.

Michael grabbed my wrist.

We hit the desk hard enough to knock over an old lamp. Brooks shouted. Noah ducked behind the chair.

Michael wasn’t trying to hurt me.

He was trying to destroy the envelope.

That told me everything.

Two officers pulled him back and put him on the floor. He fought until the handcuffs clicked.

“You don’t understand!” he yelled. “Dad was sick! He was paranoid!”

I held the envelope against my chest.

“No,” I said. “He was scared of you.”

Michael stopped fighting.

That silence was worse than denial.

I dropped to my knees and pulled Noah into my arms.

“You came,” he whispered.

“Always.”

He started crying then. So did I.

Later, after paramedics checked him, Detective Brooks photographed the envelope and allowed me to open it in front of her.

Dad’s handwriting covered four pages.

Daniel,

If you’re reading this, I waited too long.

My throat closed.

He wrote that Reed Development had been bleeding money through shell consulting firms for twenty-three months. At first he blamed an outside accountant. Then he found approvals using Eleanor’s access credentials.

My mother.

But the next paragraph changed everything.

Eleanor did not begin this.

Michael did.

According to Dad, my brother had hidden losses from a private real-estate venture by moving company funds. Mother discovered it and began covering for him. Diane helped create vendor contracts. What started as one desperate transfer became a system.

Dad had planned to remove all three of them from financial control.

He never got the chance.

The final page contained one sentence underlined twice.

Amelia knows where the original audit is.

I looked at Brooks.

“She said she had copies.”

Brooks nodded. “Then someone may still be looking for them.”

My phone rang.

Hospital.

I answered.

A nurse spoke quickly.

“Mr. Reed, your wife is safe, but we had an incident.”

“What kind of incident?”

“Someone entered her room using a staff badge.”

My hand tightened around the phone.

“Who?”

“We don’t know yet.”

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I looked at Amelia’s name on Dad’s letter.

Then the nurse said, “And they took something from under her pillow.”