Chapter 12 - THE LAST ENEMY
The investigation led us to another city.
A quiet coastal town.
A man lived there under a false name.
When we arrived, he was gone.
But the house contained hundreds of files.
Every Carter transaction.
Every secret.
Every payment.
And one final photograph.
It showed Victoria meeting the attorney twenty-nine years earlier.
Behind them stood a woman.
Sophia.
But Sophia insisted she had never met him.
The woman wasn't Sophia.
It was Elizabeth.
My adoptive mother.
My heart stopped.
She had been involved.
I couldn't believe it.
We found her old journal.
She had known I was Robert's daughter.
She had known Sophia was my mother.
She had agreed to raise me because she believed it would save me.
She had never taken money.
She had simply been terrified.
The final page said:
I am sorry, Emily.
I chose silence because I believed silence would keep you alive.
I was wrong.
I cried when I read it.
May you like
Not because I hated her.
Because I finally understood how many people had been trapped by fear.
