Chapter 8 - The FarmWe waited until morning.
Then we drove to the farm.
My mother stayed behind.
Dana refused to come.
Brin insisted on joining us.
“I need to know,” she said.
Michael drove.
Sage sat beside me.
Evelyn followed in her car.
The farm was surrounded by dead fields and rusted fencing.
There was an old farmhouse, a collapsing barn, and a small stone chapel hidden behind the trees.
The property looked abandoned.
It wasn't.
The back door had recently been opened.
Dust had been disturbed.
Someone had been there.
Inside the farmhouse, the walls were covered with framed photographs.
My father.
My uncle Daniel.
My grandfather.
And one photograph of a little boy.
Noah.
I touched the frame.
Sage looked at me.
“He looks like Grandpa.”
“He does.”
Brin pointed toward the fireplace.
“There.”
A loose stone.
Michael pulled it out.
Behind it was a metal box.
Inside was the second ledger.
Leather-bound.
Old.
Handwritten.
Page after page documented transfers, investments, and private payments.
Then I found a name.
Not my mother.
Not Dana.
Not Brin.
A man I had never seen.
Samuel Pike.
“What is this?”
Evelyn came closer.
“A lawyer.”
“What does he have to do with us?”
“Everything.”
The ledger showed payments to Pike stretching back twenty-eight years.
Then a final entry.
PAID FOR SILENCE.
No explanation.
No amount.
Just those words.
Sage turned another page.
There was a map.
The farm.
The chapel.
A marked location beneath it.
We went outside.
The chapel door was unlocked.
Inside, there were six wooden pews.
At the front stood a stone altar.
Behind it, a loose floorboard.
Michael lifted it.
A narrow stairway led underground.
My heart hammered.
We descended.
At the bottom was a concrete chamber.
There was one chair.
One table.
And a wall covered in photographs.
My father.
My uncle.
My mother.
Dana.
Brin.
Me.
Sage.
Everyone.
Dates were written beneath them.
Some were recent.
Some were decades old.
“This is surveillance,” Michael whispered.
A folder lay on the table.
It contained records of every major event in our family.
Births.
Deaths.
Marriages.
Divorces.
Bank transfers.
And one file labeled:
SAGE ELLIS.
I opened it.
Inside was a photograph of Sage taken when she was six.
Another at eleven.
Another at fourteen.
Another from three weeks ago.
Someone had been watching my daughter for years.
Sage stepped backward.
“Mom…”
I shut the folder.
A sound came from the stairway.
Footsteps.
We all turned.
A man stood in the doorway.
Tall.
Dark coat.
Gray eyes.
He looked at me.
Then at Sage.
Then at Evelyn.
Finally, he looked at the photograph of my father.
“My name is Noah Ellis.”
Sage whispered:
“Are you my cousin?”
He nodded.
Then he said the sentence that made my blood run cold.
“Your grandfather didn’t leave you the trust.”
May you like
He looked directly at me.
“He left you the evidence.”
