THE HEIRESS BEHIND THE LIE

Chapter 1: The Call

Jenna's POV

“Isolde.”

I heard the name through the phone and stopped painting. Nobody had called me that name in five years. I stared at the unfamiliar number on my screen while the voice on the other end remained silent.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Your father is dead.”

For a few seconds, I could not understand what I had heard. “What did you say?” I asked, hoping I had misunderstood.

“Your father died this morning.”

My hand dropped from the paintbrush, and it landed on the floor beside my chair. “How?” I asked.

“The police are calling it an accident.”

I looked toward the painting in front of me, but I could no longer focus on it. “That cannot be true,” I said.

My father was careful. He knew how dangerous the Ashgrove family could be, and he had spent years making sure I stayed away from the people who could hurt me.

He would not have died because of some careless mistake. “Who are you?” I asked, but the caller ended the call without answering. I called the number back twice, but it was already unavailable.

I sat on the floor beside my chair and stared at the phone. My father was dead. The words kept repeating in my head, but they still did not feel real.

He was the reason I had survived the last five years without being dragged back into my family's life. He had helped me disappear before they could force me to marry a man I hated, and he had never once asked me to come home.

Instead, he stayed away and contacted me only when he was certain it was safe. I had complained about his short calls many times, but I would have given anything to hear his voice again. Tears rolled down my face before I realized I was crying.

“You promised me you would be careful,” I whispered.

I pressed my hand over my mouth when the first sob escaped. I wanted to call him. I wanted to hear him tell me that everything was fine and that I had misunderstood the call. But there was no number I could dial that would bring him back. My father was gone, and I had not even been there when he died.

I stayed on the floor until the weather outside my window began to change. I kept remembering the last time I had seen him five years ago, when he told me to leave and never look back.

He had been afraid for me, but he still smiled when he told me that one day I would have a life that belonged to me. I had believed him. I had built that life as Jenna Calloway, far away from the Ashgrove name.

My father had been the one person who connected Jenna to Isolde, and now that connection was gone. I wiped my face and reached for my phone again. The police had called his death an accident, but I knew my father better than anyone.

He was careful, experienced, and aware of the danger around him. “You did not die by accident,” I said as I looked at his name in my contacts. “I know you did not.”

For the first time in years, I knew I could not keep running from the past. I needed to find out what had happened to him.

“I am going to find out what happened to you,” I said as I opened the drawer beside my bed. I pulled out the small wooden box my father had given me before I disappeared. I had kept it untouched because he had told me never to open it unless I had no other choice.

At the time, I had assumed he was being overly cautious, but sitting alone in my apartment after hearing that he was dead made me understand why he had given it to me.

I carried the box to the table and placed it beside my phone. My hands were still shaking when I lifted the lid. Inside was a folded piece of paper, a small metal key, and a photograph.

I picked up the photograph first and stared at the two men standing outside a building I did not recognize. My father was one of them, but the other man was a stranger to me.

I turned the photograph over and found three words written in my father's handwriting.

‘Find Zach Reyes.’

I read the words twice before placing the photograph on the table. “Why would you want me to find him?”

I opened my laptop and searched for Zach Reyes. His name appeared in several articles about business deals, property investments, and the Reyes family's influence across the city.

The articles presented him as a successful businessman and the future head of the Reyes organization, but I knew enough about families like his to understand that there was more to the public story.

The Reyes name had existed in conversations at the Ashgrove estate for years, although my father had always stopped talking whenever I entered the room. I searched for any connection between him and my father, but most of the information I found was either vague or impossible to verify.

I looked through the photograph again and noticed the building behind them. It had a familiar logo on the front. I searched for the company and found that it belonged to a business connected to the Reyes family.

“You were investigating them,” I said quietly.

My father had never told me about Zach, but he had left me a direct instruction to find him. I placed the photograph, the note, and the key into my bag. I had spent years building a quiet life, but my father's final message had given me a reason to leave it.

“I will find Zach Reyes,” I said as I locked my apartment door behind me. I walked down the stairs instead of using the elevator because I wanted to make sure nobody was waiting outside.

When I reached the street, I looked around before heading toward the nearest taxi stand. I had barely taken a few steps when a dark car moved slowly past me. I watched it continue down the road, but I could not see the driver clearly.

I told myself it was nothing and kept walking. Then the same car turned at the next street and came back in my direction. I stopped beside a shop and watched it pass again.

This time, I saw the man behind the wheel looking directly at me. My phone vibrated in my bag, and I pulled it out quickly. There was a message from an unknown number.

‘Stop looking for Zach Reyes.’

I stared at the screen until another message appeared.

‘You do not know what your father got involved in.’

I looked toward the road, but the dark car was already gone.