Chapter 6 - The Final NoticeThe envelope contained no legal notice.
It contained photographs.
Twenty-seven of them.
Every photograph showed my house.
From different angles.
Different days.
Different times.
The first was taken from across the street.
The second from the woods.
The third from the rear garden.
Then came the unsettling ones.
The library.
The kitchen.
The east corridor.
The staircase.
The basement door.
I turned the next photograph over.
A handwritten note.
You never noticed how often we were inside.
I looked at Daniel.
“Who took these?”
“We'll find out.”
The last photograph made my stomach drop.
It showed my bedroom window.
Taken from inside the house.
Vivian stood.
“When was this taken?”
Daniel examined it.
“Two nights ago.”
I stared at the image.
Two nights ago, Marissa had been at dinner with me.
Dad had been sitting six feet away.
I felt something inside me harden.
“They've been inside my house.”
Daniel nodded.
“Yes.”
“Without my permission.”
“Yes.”
Vivian looked at the photo again.
“There may have been more than one entry.”
“Can you track it?”
“Not from photographs.”
Daniel checked camera footage.
Then stopped.
“Wait.”
He pulled up the security system.
At 1:07 A.M., the cameras on the east side had briefly lost signal.
For eleven seconds.
At 1:19 A.M., the same thing happened.
Again.
And again.
Someone had learned the camera blind spots.
I turned to Daniel.
“Find out who.”
Hours later, we had a name.
A maintenance subcontractor.
He had worked at the estate three years earlier.
His company was currently employed by Bellmore Estate Consulting.
We found his address.
But he was gone.
His apartment had been emptied.
No furniture.
No clothes.
No phone.
Only one item remained.
A framed photograph of my house.
Vivian picked it up.
On the back was a handwritten date.
Six years ago.
I looked at it.
“Why would someone be photographing this house six years ago?”
She didn't answer.
Instead, she called a colleague.
Ten minutes later, she had an old corporate registry document.
The date matched.
Six years ago, my grandfather's estate had undergone a private legal review.
At the time, I hadn't known why.
Now I did.
Someone had been looking for something even then.
Something hidden here.
Something worth more than the property itself.
I returned to the basement.
Daniel had found a concealed staircase behind the wall.
It led downward.
The air was colder.
The hidden room was larger than expected.
Shelves lined the walls.
Boxes.
Old legal files.
Architectural plans.
Bank records.
And in the middle of the room was the red leather ledger.
Untouched.
I approached it slowly.
There was a lock.
Daniel broke it.
Inside were handwritten entries.
Names.
Dates.
Amounts.
Property numbers.
I turned one page.
Then another.
Then froze.
My father's name appeared.
Beside it was a number.
$2,400,000.
Underneath it:
Unaccounted transfer.
My breathing changed.
I turned another page.
Thomas Cole.
Another amount.
$3,100,000.
Then several companies.
Shell corporations.
Offshore accounts.
Property transfers.
And finally, one entry that made the room feel airless.
Bennett Estate.
I looked at the date.
It was written two years before my grandfather died.
Beside it:
Final safeguard activated.
I turned the page.
There was nothing.
The next page had been torn out.
Vivian noticed.
“Someone removed it.”
“When?”
“Recently.”
I stared at the torn binding.
Then Daniel lifted a small box from the shelf.
“There's more.”
Inside was a key.
Attached to it was a metal tag.
ROOM 7
I frowned.
“What is Room 7?”
Vivian answered.
“I don't know.”
I looked back at the ledger.
Maybe the missing page held the answer.
Then my phone buzzed.
A message from Marissa.
Dad knows you found the ledger.
Another message followed.
He's coming to the house tonight.
Then a third.
Don't let him inside.
I read them twice.
Then heard tires on the gravel outside.
Daniel checked the camera.
One black sedan.
My father's car.
May you like
And he wasn't alone.
Thomas Cole was sitting beside him.
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