The Heir I Should Fear

Chapter five: The price.

Eliana’s POV

For the first time since arriving at Blackwood, i found myself thinking about home.

Not because I missed my room anyways, not because I missed the quiet mornings with my father.

But something else had been bothering me.

A feeling.

The same feeling I had in the morning he insisted I leave.

Something had been wrong.

I just hadn’t known how wrong.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and stared at the last message my father had sent me.

Make sure you settle in. I will call you tonight.

I had read it so many times thst I knew every letter.

He never called.

At first I thought he was busy, then I thought he had fallen asleep.

By midnight,I called him.

No answer.

I tried again, stilk nothing.

The next morning, his phone was switched off which has never happened before.

My father was many things but careless wasn’t one of them.

He always answered me.

Always.

Then I realized, something was wrong.

I just didn’t know that the Answer was already sitting in his study.

The trusty was that my father’s death had been set in motion long before that Tuesday night.

I simply hadn’t been there to see it.

While I was packing for Blackwood, he had been doing something else.

Moving money, changing passwords, canceling meetings, calling people he hadn’t spoken to in years.

And according to the records I would later find, withdrawing and enormous amount of money from an account I didn’t even know existed.

The strange part wasn’t the money.

It was the date.

Every transaction had happened within the same three day period.

Three days before he died.

Someone had been forcing his hand or he had been planning to run.

I didn’t know who frightened me more.

Then i found the photograph.

Not the one from the envelope.

Another one.

It was hidden inside an old file beneath a stack of documents.

My father was standing beside three men.

I recognized one immediately, the second was unfamiliar but the third….

I couldn’t stop staring.

A coldness in his posture.

I turned the photograph over.

Nothing.

No names, no date, only one handwritten word.

Vale.

I frowned.

That name meant Nothing to me.

At least, i thought it didn’t.

Until I remembered Jay.

I almost ignored the name.

Almost actually.

But something about it felt familiar.

Not Jay, but vale.

I had seen it before, long before Blackwood.

But I just couldn’t remember where.

I closed my eyes, trying to force the memory back.

A conversation, a document, my father’s voice….

Boom! It came to me.

A few weeks before I left home,I had walked past his study room and heard him arguing with someone over the phone.

I definitely hadn’t understood the conversation then, but I remembered one sentence clearly..

“You promised me this would never reach my daughter.”

My father had sounded afraid then.

I had never heard fear in his voice before.

When I opened my eyes, my hands were already shaking forgetting I had a roommate who was staring at me all along.

If the person he had been speaking to was connected to the vale family, then my father had known something was coming,

Something involving me.

I remembered stopping outside his study room that night, my hand hovering over the door.

I had almost walked inside.

But then he lowered his voice and I couldn’t hear the rest.

Maybe that had been the moment everything changed.

Maybe my father had already known he was running out of time.

And suddenly, his Insistence that I leave got Blackwood didn’t feel like a decision anymore.

It felt like a warning meant for only me.

My stomach tightened.

No.

That couldn’t be connected.

Could it.??

I shoved the photograph back into the file.

I didn’t want to think about him.

Lately, I had been thinking about him far too much.

Which is very concerning.

There was something unsettling about Jay.

He never seemed surprised by anything.

“Elian….!”

Maya called!!

“You have been in your thoughts for long, do you mind sharing?”

I sighed.

“Nothing much honestly , I can’t forget what happened on a Tuesday night.”

“A Tuesday night?”

Maya asked in confusion.

I nodded slowly.

“Yes, my father is dead.” I said with tears in my eyes.

The words felt heavier this time.

Even after saying them so many times in my head, they still didn’t sound real when they left my mouth.

Maya froze.

“Oh my Goodness Eliana…”

“I know.”

“ I know, and somehow I don’t know how and why he did.”

“All I knew was that, it’s all connected somehow.” I said

Maya looked really confused.”

“I found series of writings that night that I just don’t seem to understand.”

“It had to do with the vale family.”

Maya looked at me.

“The vale family?” She asked.

I nodded.

“I found the name everywhere.”

She came close and gave me a hug.

“Do you think they had something to do with your father’s death?”she asked

“I don’t know.”

That was the truth.

“I just know there’s something I was missing.”

Maya makes the hug tighter.

I let her.

For a moment, I allowed myself to stop thinking.

To stop searching, to stop trying to understand why my father had left behind a trial of secrets instead of answers.

Just as I began to calm down, something caught my attention.

The file..

It was still open.

And underneath the photograph was a folded piece of paper I hadn’t noticed before.

I pulled away from Maya,

“Wait..”

“What

I reached for it.

The paper was old, the edges slightly worn,

My fingers trembled as I unfolded it.

There were only three lines written on it.

I read the first line, then the second.

And by the time I reached the third, every bit of warmth had left my body.

Do not trust the vale family.

I stared at those words.

Maya leaned closer, “what does it say?”

I couldn’t Answer.

Because beneath the warning was something worse.

A name.

My father’s handwriting was unmistakable.

And the name he had written wasn’t vale.

It was Jay.

My heart stopped and series of questions came to my head.

Who is this Jay?, what does he do?, who are the vale family?

My heart stopped as I looked at Maya.

Neither of us spoke.

Then my phone vibrated on the table….

Twice .

I grabbed my phone and it was another unknown number.

There was only one message….

You were never supposed to find the file.

My blood ran cold.

Before I could even process it, another entered.

Now they know you have it.

Blackwood wasn’t about to get interesting, it was definitely about to get twisted….