My Husband Divorced Me While I Was Unconscious After Giving Birth to Triplets — Then My Brother Uncovered His Fraud at the Town Assembly
The Oakhaven Manor house, once a beacon of comfort and family history, felt cold and empty now. Gabriel was away, busy securing his narratives with the town elders, leaving the grand house eerily silent. This was the chance Gideon had been waiting for.
He used the old surveyor’s keys, a set passed down from their grandfather, Lord Patriarch Silas Hallowell. The keys, rusty from disuse, turned with a reluctant click in the library door.
Dust motes danced in the slivers of sunlight that pierced the heavy velvet drapes. The air smelled of old paper and beeswax. This room had been Silas’s sanctuary, filled with books and maps, a world away from the bustling timber mill.
Gideon walked directly to the massive oak desk, its surface scarred with generations of use. He ran his hand over the polished wood, remembering his grandfather’s stern yet loving presence. Silas had been a man of immense foresight, cautious and shrewd, especially when it came to his family’s legacy.
He searched methodically. The usual drawers yielded ledgers and business correspondence, but nothing out of the ordinary. Gideon remembered Silas’s peculiar habits, his love for clever mechanisms and hidden compartments.
He pressed along the inner lip of a false drawer front, near the back. There was a faint click.
A small, shallow compartment, perfectly disguised, slid open with a soft sigh of ancient wood. Inside, nestled among a few dried rose petals and a silver locket, were two documents.
One was a thick, leather-bound volume, titled “Oakhaven Manor Charter – 1775.” This was the original founding document of the manor, outlining all the terms of its establishment and inheritance. The other was a sealed, smaller parchment, folded precisely.
Gideon’s heart hammered against his ribs. This was it. This felt like his grandfather speaking to him from beyond the grave. He recognized Silas’s distinctive seal, pressed into the red wax.
He pulled out the charter first, the heavy book thudding gently in his hands. Then, with careful reverence, he broke the seal on the smaller parchment. His grandfather had always said, “Leave no stone unturned, especially when it comes to the character of men.”
He sat in Silas’s old leather chair, the leather creaking softly under his weight. The sunlight, now stronger, fell across the words on the parchment. He began to read, his eyes tracing the familiar, precise script of his grandfather. Every word felt deliberate, every clause a testament to the old man’s wisdom.
It spoke of marital inheritances, of bloodline trusts, and conditions. Conditions that, Gideon realized with a jolt, might just be the very trap Gabriel had unknowingly sprung.
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