The number was blocked.
He picked up.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then a man’s voice came through.
“Samuel.”
My grandfather’s hand began to tremble.
“Who is this?”
“You know exactly who this is.”
Samuel stood.
“Daniel?”
The voice laughed softly.
“No.”
A pause.
“Daniel is dead.”
My heart stopped.
The caller continued.
“But his son is very much alive.”
The line went dead.
Samuel slowly lowered the phone.
I stared at him.
“Grandpa…”
He looked at me.
“He knows you’re here.”
“Who?”
Samuel’s eyes filled with fear.
“Ethan.”
PART 4 — THE MAN WHO NEVER REALLY LEFT
I didn’t sleep that night.
Neither did Samuel.
We locked every door.
Closed every curtain.
And kept the porch light on until sunrise.
But the thing that terrified me wasn’t the possibility that Ethan might come back.
It was the possibility that he had never really left.
At four in the morning, I finally asked the question that had been haunting me.
“Grandpa?”
Samuel was sitting at the kitchen table with the old metal box in front of him.
“Yes?”
“Did Ethan know who I was before he met me?”
Samuel looked at me.
“I don’t know.”
“But you think he did.”
“I think it’s possible.”
My stomach turned.
“So our relationship could have been planned?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“But you can tell me whether my parents’ deaths were connected to his family.”
Samuel looked down.
“I can tell you what I know.”
He pulled another document from the box.
It was an old police report.
At the bottom was a signature.
My father’s.
Samuel pointed to a paragraph.
“Your father had been investigating Sterling Holdings.”
I read the report.
He had discovered that several properties had been transferred through shell corporations.
One of the names appeared repeatedly.
Daniel Vale.
