CHAPTER 3: HER MOTHER'S SECRET
CHAPTER 3: HER MOTHER'S SECRET
The next morning, Gabriel reviewed months of footage.
Most of it showed Marta's cruelty.
But one video stopped him cold.
It had been recorded six months earlier.
Late at night.
After Lena was asleep.
Marta had entered Gabriel's private office.
She wasn't cleaning.
She was searching.
The footage showed her opening drawers and removing documents.
Then Gabriel noticed something else.
A small wooden box.
His wife's memory box.
His heart pounded.
He immediately rushed to the office and searched every shelf.
The box was gone.
Hours later, investigators hired by Gabriel located it inside a storage locker rented under Marta's name.
Inside were dozens of items that had belonged to Lena's mother.
Letters.
Photographs.
Jewelry.
And one sealed envelope.
Written in his wife's handwriting.
For Lena.
Gabriel carefully opened it.
His late wife's words filled the page.
"If you're reading this, my sweet girl, I may already be gone. But never doubt how deeply you are loved."
Gabriel felt tears rolling down his face.
Then he reached the final paragraph.
A paragraph that explained why Marta had hidden the letter.
His wife had left the majority of her inheritance directly to Lena.
Not to Gabriel.
Not to anyone else.
To Lena.
The money would become accessible on her eighteenth birthday.
Suddenly everything made sense.
Marta hadn't hated Lena.
She had wanted control.
Control over the lonely child who stood between her and a fortune worth millions.
Gabriel looked at the sleeping girl in the next room.
For months she had suffered because adults were fighting over money she didn't even know existed.
That realization filled him with fury.
But it also gave him something else.
May you like
A mission.
He would spend the rest of his life earning back his daughter's trust.
