“He's gone.”
Of course he was.
But he'd left something behind.
A letter.
For me.
My father had always written in perfect block letters.
The handwriting hadn't changed.
Evelyn,
If this has reached you, then you finally know I am alive. You will hate me, and you should. But before you decide what I am, you need to understand what Alex never understood.
The Vale evidence was never meant to prosecute Martin or Caroline. They were pieces, not players.
My hands shook.
I continued.
Alex believed the network ended nineteen years ago. It didn't. It grew. Judges changed. Companies changed. Politicians changed. The mechanism stayed the same.
I needed the original evidence because it contained the only unaltered financial map connecting the old network to the new one. Alex hid it. Then he forgot what mattered most.
Alex muttered, “I forgot nothing.”
I continued reading.
I believed the evidence remained in Sophie's apartment. I was wrong. I sent Caroline there because I knew greed would make her search more aggressively than any investigator could. I did not authorize violence. That was Caroline's choice, and for what happened to Sophie, I carry responsibility I cannot erase.
