Chapter 14
The drive out of the city took nearly three hours, carrying them away from the towering glass skyscrapers and manicured lawns of their old life, toward a quiet, sprawling valley nestled near the foothills of the northern mountains. The air here smelled of pine, damp earth, and blooming wildflowers—clean and unburdened.
David had used the last of his personal savings to secure a modest, sunlit farmhouse with a wrap-around porch and a wide, green yard that stretched out toward a rushing creek. It wasn't a mansion, and it didn't come with a trust fund or a corporate portfolio, but it had a soul.
Lily stood on the front porch, her white sneakers kicking lightly against the wooden floorboards as she watched a pair of blue jays darting between the branches of an old oak tree in the front yard.
"Do you like it here, Lily?" David asked, walking out onto the porch with a mug of coffee in his hand.
"It's better than the big house," Lily said thoughtfully, turning to look up at him with a bright, unclouded smile. "Nobody can tell us to sit somewhere else here."
"That's right," David laughed, setting his mug down on the railing and pulling her into a warm embrace. "Here, you belong right in the middle of everything."
Inside the house, the unpacking was almost complete. The leather-bound journal of Elena Vance and the silver locket rested safely on the wooden mantle above the living room fireplace—not hidden away in a safe or displayed like a corporate trophy, but kept out in the open where the light could touch it.
David walked back inside to check on the final boxes in the study. As he opened a small cardboard carton containing old photographs from his architectural career, a single white envelope slipped out from the bottom, fluttering down to land face up on the floorboards.
It was addressed to him, in handwriting that made his blood run cold. It wasn't Rachel's, and it wasn't Arthur's.
It was from his brother—the brother whose legal defense Arthur had financed a decade ago, the secret that Evelyn had used to threaten him just days before.
May you like
David knelt slowly, his hand hovering over the white envelope. He hadn't spoken to his brother in over seven years, believing him to be living safely overseas under a government protection program.
With trembling fingers, he picked up the envelope, turned it over, and broke the red wax seal.
