Chapter 6 - THE APARTMENT
Vanessa left Emma’s building nine minutes before police arrived.
She did not take the laptop.
That was the good news.
The bad news was obvious the second Margaret opened the apartment.
Drawers had been emptied.
A filing cabinet stood open.
A desk chair lay on its side.
Someone had searched for something in a hurry.
Detective Alvarez stopped everyone at the doorway and called a crime-scene unit. Because Emma’s estate status and Margaret’s authority still had to be confirmed, we waited instead of charging through the place ourselves.
I hated waiting.
But every rushed shortcut was exactly what Vanessa would later use against us.
By afternoon, investigators documented the apartment and released certain items to Emma’s executor, a small-town attorney named Harold Mercer.
Harold brought us into his office with Emma’s laptop still inside an evidence sleeve.
“Emma contacted my firm six months ago,” he said. “She wanted her affairs organized because of her diagnosis.”
“Did she ever mention me?”
“Repeatedly.”
I swallowed.
Harold opened a paper file.
“She believed you rejected paternity years ago. She had copies of emails she said came from your personal account.”
Elena leaned forward.
“Can we see them?”
He turned the file.
The first email was dated eight years earlier.
Emma, I received your letter. The child is not my responsibility. Do not contact me again.
It was signed Ryan.
My stomach rolled.
“I never wrote that.”
There were four more.
All brutal.
All brief.
All supposedly from me.
One told Emma not to embarrass herself by pursuing money.
Another threatened legal action if she contacted my family.
A third told her I was engaged.
The engagement timing was wrong.
I did not propose to Vanessa until five months later.
Elena noticed too.
“That matters,” she said.
Harold handed us another page.
Emma’s response.
I never asked you for money. I asked you to know your daughter.
I had to put the paper down.
For eight years, Sophie had grown up believing I knew she existed and chose not to care.
The injury in that knowledge was different from anger.
It was grief for something that had happened while I was alive and completely unaware.
The laptop itself was turned over for forensic examination rather than casually opened.
That evening, Vanessa’s attorney finally contacted Elena.
Vanessa would surrender the following morning.
She denied imprisoning Sophie.
She claimed Sophie had become “agitated and violent,” entered the service cavity voluntarily, and refused to leave.
I actually laughed when Elena read it.
Then I looked at Ethan’s shoulder bruise.
Not funny.
“She’ll say Ethan lied too.”
“She already is,” Elena said.
The statement accused Ethan of becoming “obsessively attached to the unknown girl” and suggested I had encouraged both children after discovering the situation.
Vanessa was attacking credibility before evidence finished speaking.
That night, Sophie asked if she could talk to me alone.
When Ethan left the room, she stared at her hands.
“Did you really send those emails?”
“No.”
“How do I know?”
I had no clever answer.
“You don’t yet.”
Her eyes filled.
I forced myself not to defend my feelings.
“But I’m going to prove what happened, even if the proof makes me look terrible in other ways.”
Sophie nodded slowly.
Trust had not begun.
May you like
But honesty had.
📖 The fake emails explained why Sophie believed I abandoned her, yet proving I never wrote them would matter less unless I could also prove who did. 👇
