Chapter 6 - The Missing Deed
Three days after the funeral,
I returned to the apartment while Gavin and Harriet were out at a "business lunch."
I needed my things,
but more importantly,
I needed to check the storage room one last time.
I walked through the door I had broken,
the wood still jagged and raw.
I went straight to my metal document box,
the one I had kept since college.
I found it hidden behind a stack of old winter coats.
But when I pulled it out,
my heart stopped.
The lock had been picked.
The lid was slightly ajar,
the papers inside shuffled and disorganized.
I frantically searched through the files—my birth certificate,
my passport,
my old bank statements.
Everything was there except for one thing.
The deed to my mother’s property in Apex.
It was a small plot of land,
only a few acres,
that had been in our family for generations.
I had always assumed it was worthless,
just a patch of trees and weeds near the highway.
But then I remembered the news reports.
The new industrial corridor.
The tech companies moving into the area.
The land was no longer just dirt.
It was a gold mine.
I realized then why they had locked me up that night.
They knew my mother was dying.
They knew the property would pass to me.
And they wanted to make sure I was too "hysterical"
or "unstable"
to realize its true value.
While I was crying in the dark,
they were likely searching for this very paper.
I sat on the floor of the storage room,
clutching the empty folder.
They had stolen my grief.
They had stolen my time.
And now they were trying to steal my future.
But as I looked deeper into the box,
I found something they had missed.
A small,
blue envelope stuck to the bottom of the tray.
It was a letter from a lawyer named Elias Thorne.
It was dated only a week ago.
"Loretta,"
it read.
"I have completed the secondary trust as you requested."
"The property in Apex cannot be sold or transferred without a DNA-verified signature."
"Even a marriage won't give him access."
"Keep this safe."
I let out a shaky breath,
a hysterical laugh bubbling up in my throat.
My mother hadn't just been patient.
She had been a strategist.
May you like
She had known Gavin was a predator.
And she had built a trap that only I could spring.
