My Stepmother Threw My Little Brother’s Backpack Into the Pool to Hide a Secret — Until the Submerged Device Flashed a Warning from Our Missing Nanny
The ghostly reflection in the pool solidified my resolve. My mother’s spirit was here, trapped, waiting for justice. Victoria’s crimes were not just against the living, but against the dead. My next step was to expose Silas Gable, the corrupt appraiser.
I called Silas’s office the next morning. His secretary sounded flustered but eventually gave me an appointment. “Mr. Gable is very busy,” she said, her voice clipped. “Only ten minutes.”
His office was on the third floor of a nondescript building downtown. It smelled of stale coffee and desperation. Silas Gable, a man with thinning hair and a nervous tic in his left eye, looked up from his desk as I walked in. He didn’t offer me a seat.
“Julian. What can I do for you?” His voice was raspy, a forced politeness in his tone.
I laid out the altered valuation logs I’d retrieved from my father’s old study, comparing them to older, official reports I’d found in Marcus O’Connor’s files. The discrepancies were glaring: a perfectly sound foundation suddenly “failing,” an attic with “severe water damage” that was actually bone dry.
“These are fake, Silas,” I stated, my voice low and steady. “And I know why Victoria had you do it. To force a distress sale.”
Silas’s nervous tic intensified. He shifted in his seat, his gaze darting around the room, avoiding my eyes. A sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about, Julian,” he stammered, his voice cracking. “My reports are fully compliant.”
“They’re not,” I countered, pushing the documents across his desk. “And I have proof that Victoria is a murderer. Her own voice, Silas. Confessing to poisoning my mother.”
His face went ashen. He pressed his lips into a thin, white line. He glanced towards the door, then back at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and something I couldn’t quite place.
“She… she pays well,” he whispered, almost to himself. “Always cash. Never a trace.”
“How much?” I pressed, leaning forward.
He swallowed hard. “Sixty-five thousand. In cash. To suppress the original land covenant.”
My breath hitched. “The land covenant? What are you talking about?”
“It’s… it’s ancient,” he stammered, pulling at his collar. “A spiritual protection. Tied to the Hawley family line. Says the land can only be sold under specific conditions, and only to direct descendants. It’s in the original deed, buried deep in the county archives. A legitimate appraiser would have found it.”
So Victoria hadn’t just faked a structural report; she was trying to destroy the very spiritual foundation of the estate.
“I need you to sign an affidavit, Silas,” I urged, sliding a blank legal document across his desk. “Admitting what you did. What Victoria made you do.”
He recoiled as if burned. “No! I can’t. You don’t understand. She’s… she’s not just paying me for silence. She’s protecting something. Something dark. She said… she said she’d make sure I disappeared if I ever crossed her.”
His eyes were wide with genuine terror, not just of legal repercussions, but of something far more sinister. He was trembling, shaking his head furiously.
“I can’t. I can’t. She knows things. She has power,” he babbled, pushing the affidavit away. “Just… just get out, Julian. Please. I’ve told you too much already.”
Silas Gable, the corrupt enabler, had just revealed a shocking layer to Victoria’s scheme: not just financial fraud, but an attempt to break an ancient spiritual covenant tied to our land. But his fear of Victoria was so absolute, he wouldn’t commit his confession to paper, leaving me with a critical piece of the puzzle, but no official proof.
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