CHAPTER 14
I didn’t sleep that night.
The house was too quiet. The kind of silence that presses against your skin, making it hard to breathe. I sat on the edge of my bed, the small crumpled note between my fingers, the words replaying in my head over and over again.
“Don’t trust the file.”
That was all it said. Four words. No name, no explanation, just a warning sharp enough to slice into my chest.
The file was still in my bag, right where I’d shoved it after the meeting. I hadn’t opened it. I was scared to. Not because of the papers themselves, but because of what it would mean if the note was true. If someone had gone that far to warn me, then everything I’d been holding onto—the tiny scraps of truth about my father’s life, his death, his properties—was now a lie waiting to swallow
