I didn’t sleep that night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the burned sketch.
My mother’s handwriting.
The strange symbol.
The silver cufflink.
And Adrian saying:
Someone wanted us to believe Daniel did it.
By morning, I had made a decision.
I wasn’t going to wait for Adrian to tell me the truth anymore.
I was going to find it myself.
I arrived at my studio before eight.
The police had already finished their inspection.
The damage wasn’t extensive.
But my mother’s old notebook was still missing.
That bothered me more than the broken window.
Someone hadn’t come for money.
They had come for information.
I sat at my desk and opened my laptop.
The first thing I searched was:
Carter Trust.
Thousands of results appeared.
Most were old financial reports.
I started reading.
Two hours later, I found something strange.
A transaction from ten years ago.
It was small compared with the money that had disappeared later.
But the account number was familiar. The source of this chapter is g.com.
I checked the Carter Trust records again.
The account had been opened three months before my family’s financial collapse.
The beneficiary wasn’t my father.
It wasn’t my mother.
It wasn’t Sophia.
It was a company.
Blackwood Capital Holdings.
I stared at the screen.
My heart began to race.
Why would my father have transferred money to a Blackwood company?
I took a screenshot.
Then another.
My phone rang.
Claire.
“Please tell me you found something.”
“I think I did.”
“How bad?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I sent her the documents.
There was a long silence.
Then she said:
“Elena.”
“What?”
“What?”
“It was dissolved ten years ago.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
“Already trying.”
I looked at the screen again.
Ten years.
Everything came back to ten years.
Then another thought hit me.
I opened the browser.
And searched one more thing.
Adrian Blackwood ten years ago.
The first result was an old charity article.
A photograph showed a twenty-one-year-old Adrian standing beside his father.
I stared at the image.
Then at the date.
My hands went cold.
The charity event had happened exactly ten years ago.
The same year the company disappeared.
The same year my family collapsed.
And the same year Adrian claimed he had never known me.
I leaned back.
For the first time, I had a question I was afraid to ask.
Had Adrian lied to me?