If not, we will make your whole family’s life hell. The recording ended there, leaving a deadly silence in the room. My whole body trembled, so it was clear. The strange man named Victor was the mastermind. He had teamed up with my own father-in-law to steal Sterling’s beloved project. And when Sterling refused, he ordered my father-in-law to handle his own son.
Sterling’s disappearance was no longer speculation. It was a planned murder. Tears rolled down my cheeks again, but this time they were tears of extreme hatred. Elias gently patted my shoulder to comfort me. Amara, don’t cry. We have to be strong. Sterling sacrificed his life to protect this evidence.
We must not disappoint him. He turned to the computer screen. Now we have to see what the other file contains. The text file was very complexely encrypted. Elias with his professional hacking skills needed almost an hour to break through the firewall. When the first lines appeared, we all held our breath. It was not a project plan.
It was a testament, a testament that Sterling had written with all his clarity and pain. to Amara, my beloved wife. If you read these lines, I am probably no longer among the living. The letter began with loving words. He apologized for not being able to protect me and give me a fulfilling life. Then he told the whole truth.
The Alpharetta housing development project, his child, was not just an ordinary real estate project. It was a green project that used the most advanced renewable energy technologies. A project that could change the face of the entire region. But precisely because of this enormous potential, Victor Thorne, a notorious real estate mogul in the criminal underworld, had set his sights on it.
Victor had used his contacts and dirty methods to put pressure on and force my father-in-law’s firm to sell the project at a bargain price. and my father-in-law, out of fear of Victor’s power and greed for the short-term profit, had agreed to betray his own son’s life’s work. Sterling had found out.
He had tried to prevent it and collected evidence about Victor’s illegal activities, from money laundering and tax evasion to threats and seizing land from local land owners. He hadn’t expected that his father, whom he had always respected, could become so cruel because of money. Sterling’s handwriting expressed deep pain. He has chosen to stand on the side of evil.
He gave me a plane ticket and a large amount of money, demanding that I leave the country and forget everything, but I can’t do that. I can’t close my eyes to the crime. I can’t leave you alone. I have decided to stay and fight until the end.” And at the end of the letter, there was a paragraph that made my whole body freeze.
Amara, if something happens to me, trust no one in my family. Not even Jordan. Not even Jordan. The last lines in Sterling’s Testament hit my strained mind like an invisible sledgehammer. My whole body froze. My breathing seemed to stop. I slowly raised my head, my gaze confused and suspicious, and stared at the young woman sitting right next to me.
Jordan, the sister-in-law I had just given my full trust to, the only ally I thought I had. Was she also part of this cruel game? Jordan was no less stunned. She stared at the lines on the laptop screen. Her beautiful face was chalk white. Not a drop of blood was left on it. No, he can’t be serious, she stammered. Her voice trembled.
Sterling, why did he write that? What did I do wrong? Elias sitting next to her was also frozen. The entire room again fell into a stifling silence, but this time the silence was not the silence of unity, but the silence of distrust, of the invisible wall that had just been erected between us. I looked at Jordan, trying to find a sign of falsehood in her eyes, but all I saw was panic, hurt, and extreme pain. She was also shocked.
Couldn’t believe that her brother, whom she loved so much, could distrust her. I don’t know anything. I swear it, Amara. Jordan broke down, weeping. Tears of anger ran down her cheeks. For 3 years, I searched for the truth alone. I hate my parents. I hate Victor. I just want justice for my brother.
Why didn’t he trust me? The pain in her voice was too real. It didn’t sound like acting, but Sterling’s last words, the words of a man facing death, couldn’t be a joke either. There must be a reason, a problem that Jordan herself was unaware of. “Please calm down,” said Elias, who was the first to regain his composure. He looked at me and then at Jordan.
“Serling wrote these lines when he was cornered. Maybe he discovered something that made him distrust everyone. We can’t condemn Jordan based on a single sentence. There must be a reason. Elias’s words helped me calm down a little. Right. I couldn’t panic. The most important thing now was to find the reason for Sterling’s warning.
Jordan, try to remember. I tried to keep my voice steady. Did anything happen between you and Sterling shortly before he disappeared? Or did you unintentionally pass on information to your parents? Jordan sobbed, trying to rumage through her memories. No, nothing. Everything between him and me was normal.
He even gave me a large amount of money and told me to go on vacation for a while and distract myself not to stay home. He said something unpleasant would soon happen at home. I thought he was just being overcautious. She paused, her eyes widening as if something occurred to her. “Oh yes, one thing happened.
About 2 weeks before he left, I lost my cell phone.” “You lost your cell phone?” Elias and I asked simultaneously. Yes. Jordan nodded. Her face was full of regret. I was at a bar with friends that day and drank a little too much. The next morning when I woke up, my phone was gone. I searched everywhere but couldn’t find it.
I just thought I had been careless or it had been stolen. I immediately got a new SIM card. A lost cell phone. This detail seemed small, but in this situation, it could be the most important link. The phone wasn’t lost, Elias said. His voice became sharp. It was stolen, and the thieves were your parents. They read all the messages.
They knew Sterling suspected them. They even knew he was collecting evidence. And they also knew that you were the only person he trusted. And that’s why, I continued, my throat constricted. That’s why Sterling thought you had betrayed him and passed the secret on to your parents. The warning wasn’t because he hated her, but because he was so hurt when he thought that even his sister, whom he trusted the most, was on the side of the enemies.
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