PART 1][
I found the letter three weeks after my husband died.
It was hidden inside a folder I almost threw away.
At first, I didn’t even recognize the handwriting.
Then I saw my name.
Emily.
I sat down slowly at my husband’s old desk and read the first line.
If you’re reading this, I’m probably already dead.
I stopped breathing for a second.
Liam had been dead for twenty-three days.
The police called his death a car accident.
Everyone did.
Sarah, my sister, had been beside me at the funeral. She held my hand when I couldn’t stop crying. She brought food to my house. She even slept on my couch for three nights because she said she didn’t want me to be alone.
She was the person I trusted most.
Until I read the next line.
Emily, there is something you need to know about Sarah.
I read it again.
Then again.
My hands started shaking.
Liam had written that I should never trust my sister.
Not with my money.
Not with my home.
And especially not with the documents he had hidden.
I wanted to believe there was another explanation.
There had to be.
Liam loved Sarah too.
So why would he write something like that?
I kept reading.
He mentioned money transfers from the company where he worked. Accounts I had never heard of. Meetings he had never told me about.
And then he wrote something that made my stomach turn.
Marcus knows.
Marcus was Liam’s boss.
The same man who had called me that morning.
He told me he had found something that belonged to Liam and thought I should come to the office to collect it.
At the time, I thought he was being kind.
I was wrong.
When I arrived, the office was almost empty.
Rain tapped against the huge windows as Marcus closed the door behind me.
“Emily,” he said, “I’m glad you came.”
Something about his voice made me uncomfortable.
I placed my handbag on the chair.
“What did you find?”
He looked at me for a moment.
Then he said something I will never forget.
“Your husband wasn’t supposed to find those records.”
My heart dropped.
“What records?”
Marcus didn’t answer.
Instead, he walked toward the desk and looked at the folder in my hands.
The same folder that contained Liam’s letter.
His eyes went straight to it.
And suddenly I understood.
He hadn’t called me there to give me something.
He wanted to know what I had found.
I stepped backward.
Marcus stepped forward.
“Give me the folder, Emily.”
I shook my head.][
“No.”
His expression changed.
For the first time, I saw something in his face that frightened me.
Not anger.
Fear.
He was afraid of what was inside that folder.
And that meant Liam had been right about one thing.
His death hadn’t been an accident.
I reached for my phone.
Marcus moved faster.
He locked the office door.
Click.
I stared at the lock.
Then at him.
“Open the door.”
He didn’t move.
“Emily,” he said quietly, “you really don’t understand what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
I looked down at the folder.
There were photographs inside.
Photographs of my sister.
Sarah meeting a man I had never seen before.
Sarah standing outside a bank.
Sarah getting into a black car two days before Liam died.
My mind was racing.
Why had my husband been investigating my sister?
Why was Marcus involved?
And who was the man in those photographs?
Then the office phone rang.
Both of us froze.
Marcus looked toward the desk.
I looked at the caller ID.
