The words hit harder than they should. I blink back tears I don't have time for. Not yet. Not until this is over.
With his hand at the base of my spine, Blake guides me out of the office, down the stairs, and back into the Wintervale cold where snow's falling heavier now. The SUV's still there, still watching. Don’t they have better shit to do?
"Where to now?" I ask.
"Now we look at everything your mother sent Talia.” He unlocks the car, holds my door. “It's time we find out what ammunition you’re working with.”
We don't go back to Blake's apartment. Instead, he drives us to the outskirts of Wintervale, to an area I don't recognize. There are old industrial buildings and repurposed warehouses, the kind of neighborhood that's either gentrifying or dying. Frankly, it’s hard to tell which.
After shaking the tail on us (which he could have done a long time ago), he pulls into an underground garage beneath a building that looks abandoned from the outside.
"Safe house," he explains. "Talia owns it through a shell company. There’s no connection to my family, no connection to anything. We can work here without eyes.”
The apartment is sparsely decorated with functional furniture, blackout curtains, and a desktop computer that looks more sophisticated than anything I've seen outside of government facilities.
"Talia's setup," Blake says, booting up the system. "Encrypted, air-gapped, completely secure. Whatever's on your mother's flash drive, we can view it here without anyone knowing."
I hand him the flash drive with trembling fingers.
He inserts it and pulls up a chair beside me.
The screen flickers to life.
LILA'S FILES - LAST MODIFIED: MARCH 15, THREE YEARS AGO
Three years ago. Two months before she died.
Blake opens the first folder. GENEALOGY
Inside are scanned documents, including birth certificates, marriage licenses, and death records. Some of which I’ve seen on the hard copies Talia gave me. There’s a family tree that stretches back five generations, connecting my mother to Edmund Kingsley through his youngest daughter, Catherine, who was disowned in 1962 for marrying a black civil rights activist.
Consequently, my great-grandmother’s name was struck from the family Bible, her inheritance was denied, and she was erased from the official record as if she never existed. But the documents in front of me don't lie. The bloodline is clear, unbroken, and legally verifiable.
"She traced it," I whisper. "Every generation, every connection. This is what Dr. Richardson needs for comparison."
"There's more." Blake opens the next folder.
FINANCIAL RECORDS
Spreadsheets. Bank accounts. Shell corporations. A labyrinth of money moving through Wintervale's founding families like blood through arteries. And there, highlighted in yellow, are transactions that may be tied to my mother's death.
A payment of $500,000 from a Kingsley family trust to a shell company called Ember Holdings LLC, three days before my mother died.
My eyes widen when I notice another payment of $250,000 from the same trust to a law firm I recognize. It’s the firm that handled her autopsy, the investigation, and the settlement with my father.
"They paid them off," I say. My voice sounds distant, hollow. "Paid the investigators. Paid my father. Paid everyone to look the other way."
“We’re not sure about your father’s involvement,” Blake says in an effort to soothe me. “Keep reading.”
I scroll down. More payments. More shell companies. And one name that appears over and over, receiving funds from multiple sources.
Marcus Thorne.
The prosecutor who closed my mother's case.
"He's been on the Kingsley payroll for years," Blake says, reading over my shoulder. "Your mother found it and documented it, probably not understanding what she was reading.”
“Her own death warrant.”
