Chapter 5
“Give me the letters!” Olivia screamed.
Flames crawled up the wall behind her.
“You’ll burn with them,” I shouted.
“Then come take the journal.”
She raised it over the fire.
Nora cried out.
“That belonged to Robert!”
Olivia smiled.
“That’s why it has to disappear.”
I climbed back through the window.
Samuel shouted from the alley, but I ignored him.
Olivia backed toward the stairs.
Smoke thickened between us.
“You told me Nora abandoned me,” I said. “You stole money from her. You declared me dead. Was any part of my life safe from you?”
“You had everything!”
“I slept in the basement.”
“Dad loved you more.”
The hatred in her voice sounded thirty years old.
“He looked at you and saw his second chance. He looked at me and saw Mom.”
“This wasn’t my fault.”
“It didn’t have to be your fault. You existed. That was enough.”
A shelf collapsed, throwing sparks across the floor.
Olivia flinched.
I lunged.
She tried to throw the journal into the flames, but I caught her wrist.
We struggled as smoke filled my lungs.
Then the floor beneath Olivia cracked.
Her anger vanished.
“Daniel!”
The boards collapsed.
I grabbed her arm before she fell into the burning shop below.
She dangled over the hole, screaming.
The journal slipped from her hand and landed near the window.
“Don’t let me fall!”
For one terrible second, I remembered every slap, every insult, and every year she had helped Mom destroy me.
Then I pulled.
Because I refused to become them.
Olivia clawed her way onto solid flooring.
I shoved the journal inside my jacket and dragged her toward the window.
Firefighters had reached the alley.
They brought us down one at a time.
Nora wrapped her arms around me the moment my feet touched the ground.
It was the first time my biological mother had held me since the day I was born.
“I thought I lost you again,” she sobbed.
Police officers surrounded Olivia.
She immediately pointed at me.
“He started the fire!”
Samuel stepped forward.
“I saw Ms. Hayes carrying the gasoline can. The bookstore’s security system will support my statement.”
Olivia’s confidence faltered.
An officer placed her in handcuffs.
As they led her toward a patrol car, she twisted around.
“Read the journal, Daniel! Read what your precious father wrote about you!”
At the hospital, doctors treated us for smoke inhalation.
Nora sat beside my bed, refusing to leave.
Samuel dried the journal page by page with help from a document specialist.
Most of it had survived.
The final entries covered the months before Dad’s death.
March 8.
Evelyn discovered the trust. She demanded I dissolve it. I refused.
March 19.
Olivia copied Daniel’s signature from the business records. I confronted her. Evelyn defended her.
April 2.
I contacted Samuel but could not tell him everything over the phone. Someone has been entering my office.
April 11.
Nora agreed to meet Daniel after his eighteenth birthday. I will finally tell him the truth.
The last entry was written the day before Dad died.
Evelyn knows about the evidence. If anything happens to me, Daniel must understand that his mother and sister—
The sentence ended there.
The remaining page had been torn out.
“Olivia may have it,” Samuel said.
A detective named Carla Ruiz entered the room.
She had already examined the bookstore footage.
The cameras clearly showed Olivia forcing the door and pouring gasoline near the stairs.
“She’s being charged with arson, attempted fraud, and reckless endangerment,” Ruiz said. “Other charges are likely.”
“Ask her about my father’s death.”
Ruiz pulled up a chair.
“I reviewed the old file while you were being treated. There are problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Your father had bruises on both wrists. The medical examiner noted them, but the investigating officer accepted your mother’s claim that he bruised easily from medication.”
“Could someone have pushed him?”
“Yes.”
Nora squeezed my hand.
Ruiz continued.
“There’s something else. Your sister had a second phone in her coat. It contains recent messages from Evelyn.”
She showed me photographs of the screen.
Did you get the journal?
Not yet.
Then burn everything. We cannot let Daniel see the final page.
The messages continued.
Olivia: What if Nora is inside?
Evelyn: Then the problem solves itself.
My stomach turned.
Mom had known Olivia was going to the bookstore.
She had encouraged her to destroy the evidence, even if Nora died.
“Where is Evelyn now?” I asked.
Ruiz’s expression sharpened.
“Officers went to the house.”
“And?”
“She was gone. So were her passport, jewelry, and medication.”
Mom was running.
I reached for my phone and opened the home-security application.
Although I had stopped paying the mortgage, the security account was still in my name.
The front-door camera showed Mom leaving with two suitcases.
But she wasn’t alone.
A man carried the second bag.
Samuel leaned closer to the screen.
His face went pale.
“I know him.”
May you like
“Who is he?”
“The officer who investigated your father’s death.”
