Chapter 5 - THE LAWYER IN THE EMPTY OFFICE
The attorney's office had been abandoned for six years.
Yet when Elena arrived with Ruiz, the lights were on.
The sign outside still carried the firm's old name.
Inside, dust covered the desks.
Files filled the shelves.
Everything looked untouched.
Except for one desk.
There was a fresh cup of coffee beside the computer.
Ruiz drew his weapon.
“Stay behind me.”
They entered slowly.
A printer suddenly came alive.
One page emerged.
Elena walked toward it.
It contained a single sentence.
YOUR MOTHER KNEW THE TRUTH.
Then another page printed.
SO DID YOUR FATHER.
Elena's heart stopped.
“My father?”
Her father had died when she was young.
At least, that was what she had always been told.
Ruiz looked at the documents.
“Maybe the family lied about more than one death.”
A door slammed upstairs.
They ran.
At the end of the hallway stood an elderly man.
The attorney.
Alive.
He looked at Elena.
“You shouldn't have come.”
She stepped forward.
“You knew my parents.”
“Yes.”
“You knew the Howards.”
“Yes.”
“You knew about the trust.”
He sighed.
“I created part of it.”
Elena's voice hardened.
“Why did my mother die believing she couldn't tell me the truth?”
The attorney looked away.
“Because she was protecting you.”
“From whom?”
He answered with one word.
“Richard.”
Elena's blood ran cold.
The attorney explained that Richard Hale had spent decades manipulating the Howard family from behind the scenes.
He had orchestrated financial transfers.
He had created shell companies.
He had manipulated Daniel.
He had recruited Vanessa.
But there was something even more shocking.
Richard wasn't trying to steal the Howard fortune.
He was trying to reclaim it.
Because according to an old legal document, Richard was the true beneficiary of a hidden trust created by the Howard patriarch.
The document had been concealed.
And Elena's mother had found it.
“She hid it where?” Elena asked.
The attorney looked at her.
“With you.”
Elena frowned.
“What do you mean?”
He pointed to the gold pendant around her neck.
Elena touched it.
Her mother had given it to her the night before she died.
She had worn it for years.
The attorney said:
“That pendant contains a key.”
“To what?”
“The original trust vault.”
Elena stared at him.
The old attorney reached into a drawer.
He removed a small metal key.
“This opens the vault.”
Ruiz looked at him.
“Where is it?”
The attorney smiled sadly.
“You already know.”
Elena suddenly remembered.
The old Howard cemetery.
Her mother's grave.
The family mausoleum.
The attorney continued:
“Your mother knew they would eventually come for you. She believed the only safe place to hide the evidence was somewhere no one would search.”
Elena touched the pendant.
“But Richard knows about it.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
The attorney's expression darkened.
“Because he has someone close to you.”
Elena's heart dropped.
“Who?”
Before he could answer, the office windows shattered.
The attorney fell.
Ruiz rushed toward him.
Elena ducked behind the desk.
A car sped away outside.
The attorney was alive but injured.
His hand clutched Elena's wrist.
“Don't go to the cemetery.”
“Why?”
He whispered:
“They're waiting for you there.”
Then he pressed a tiny memory card into her palm.
“One recording.”
“What recording?”
“The one your mother made the night she disappeared.”
Elena stared at it.
Her mother had supposedly died fifteen years ago.
But suddenly Elena wondered whether that was another lie.
May you like
And if her mother had survived...
Where had she been all these years?
