Chapter 13 - THE SECRET FROM THE PAST
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second.
Elias fell silent, his expression hardening into something unreadable. He straightened his coat as best he could while Arthur held him, waiting with strange calmness for the officers to arrive.
Lydia stood apart, arms wrapped around herself, not looking at anyone.
When the police burst through the door, they found us exactly as we were. Arthur handed over the binder. He told them everything. Elias was read his rights and led away without a word—no denial, no plea, only a long, steady look at me before the car door shut.
Lydia stepped forward then. She handed the officers a written statement—everything she knew, everything she had done. She surrendered her passport voluntarily.
“I will cooperate fully,” she told them. “Whatever sentence I deserve… I will accept.”
They took her too, but not in handcuffs. She walked to the door, paused, and looked back at me. I gave a small, sad nod. She nodded in return, then stepped out into the gray morning.
Arthur and I rode home in silence. Thomas drove slowly, the rising sun painting the sky pale gold.
Once inside the house, I went straight to my study. I sat at my desk and opened Elias’s binder again. I needed to be certain. To see it all laid out clearly.
The records were meticulous. Every payment to Halloway. Every transfer. Every date. And then—something near the back stopped my breath.
A handwritten note, tucked between two bank statements. Not dated. Not signed. But the handwriting was unmistakably Elias’s.
She knows. She has always known. She waits only for the right moment to take what is hers. Do not underestimate her patience. It is stronger than yours.
I read it again. She knows. She waits.
Who?
I turned the page. Attached to the note was a copy of my husband’s will—drawn up shortly before his death. I had read it a hundred times. But there, in the fine print at the very bottom, was a clause I had never seen.
If Margaret Whitmore predeceases me, or is proven mentally unfit, or dies without a direct heir of sound mind and body—everything passes to Lydia Sterling.
My hands shook.
My husband had never mentioned this clause. Elias had drawn up the will. And Elias had been the one to explain its terms to me after the funeral—telling me simply that I inherited everything, that Arthur would succeed me. He had omitted this part entirely.
I stood up, my mind racing.
If I had died that night in the rain… if Arthur had truly died in that accident… everything would have passed to Lydia.
And then I understood.
Elias hadn’t been working for himself alone. He had been grooming Lydia. Setting her up. Waiting for her to inherit. And Lydia—she had known. She had known all along. Not every detail, perhaps. But she had known what stood at the end of the path.
She had told me she wanted fairness. To be seen. But she had also known exactly what the will said.
I sat back down, staring at the note. She waits only for the right moment.
Had Lydia truly turned on Elias out of remorse? Or had she simply realized that Elias was about to run—and that without him, she could never claim what was written in those pages?
Had she chosen to betray him not because it was right… but because she realized she could still inherit everything another way?
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Slowly, I closed the binder. I locked it inside the safe beside Arthur’s journal.
Some secrets, I thought, are buried so deep… you never truly know who is telling the truth.
