Chapter 3: The Threat in the Mail (
Bella spent the next two weeks settling back into the mansion, helping her father recover from his stroke, and gathering all the evidence she needed to take Carla and Jake to court. She’d hired a private investigator named Mick, who had spent the past week tracking down Carla and Jake, who had gone into hiding after their arrest. “They’re staying at a motel in Buffalo,” Mick told her over the phone, his voice gruff and no-nonsense. “And they’ve been talking to a lawyer, trying to get the charges dropped.”
Bella’s heart sank. She’d been so sure that Carla and Jake would be arrested and convicted, but now she realized that they had money, and they had connections. She’d spent the past two nights staying up late, going through the documents from her grandfather’s safe, and she’d found something else that she’d missed the first time: a clause in the trust that stated that if Bella was unable to inherit the estate, it would be passed down to her father’s closest living relative-which was Jake’s mother, who lived in Florida. Carla and Jake had known about this clause all along, and that was why they’d been so desperate to get Richard to sign the document.
That afternoon, Bella was sitting in the sunroom, going over the court documents, when she heard a knock on the front door. She walked over and opened it, and she found a manila envelope sitting on the doormat, with no return address. She picked it up and brought it inside, opening it to find a single sheet of paper, with a typed message scrawled across the top: “Back off, Bella. Or your father will regret it.”
Bella’s blood ran cold. She flipped the envelope over, and she found a small, dried-up flower tucked inside, the same kind of flower that grew in the garden outside the mansion, the same kind that her father had planted on their first anniversary together. She’d seen this flower before, on the night that Carla had first tried to convince Richard to sign the document. Carla had been holding a bouquet of these flowers, and she’d told Bella that they were “a symbol of new beginnings.”
She called Mick immediately, telling him about the envelope and the flower. “This is a threat,” he said, his voice serious. “They’re trying to scare you. But don’t let them. I’ll send a couple of guys to watch the mansion tonight. You and your father should stay somewhere else until this is over.”
But Bella refused. She wasn’t going to run away from her own home, not after everything she’d been through. She told Mick to send the guards, but she and her father would stay in the mansion. That night, she sat up with her father, watching old family movies on the TV, as the guards patrolled the outside of the mansion. She heard the sound of a car driving past the house twice, but she didn’t think anything of it, until she heard a loud crash coming from the backyard.
She grabbed her gun (a small, licensed handgun that she’d bought after her mother’s death) and ran outside, shining her flashlight across the garden. She found a large rock sitting on the ground, next to the flower bed where her father had planted the roses, and she noticed a piece of paper taped to the rock, with the same typed message: “Next time, it won’t be a rock.”
Bella called the sheriff’s department again, and they sent a patrol car to the mansion, but they told her that there was nothing they could do unless someone was actually hurt. “This is a minor threat,” the deputy said, his voice bored. “You’re going to have to deal with it on your own.”
That night, Bella couldn’t sleep. She sat in her old bedroom, staring at the wall, as the guards patrolled outside. She thought about her mother, who had died in a car accident 12 years prior, and she thought about how she’d promised herself that she would never let anyone hurt her family again. She pulled out the letter from her grandfather’s safe, and she read it again, until her eyes grew heavy.
The next morning, Bella woke up to the sound of her father screaming. She ran downstairs to the sunroom, and she found him sitting in his chair, holding his chest, his face pale with pain. “I can’t breathe,” he gasped, and Bella called 911 immediately, rushing to his side. The paramedics arrived 10 minutes later, and they rushed him to the hospital, telling Bella that he was having a heart attack, brought on by stress and the recent trauma of the past few weeks.
Bella stayed at the hospital with her father for the next three days, and when she finally went back to the mansion, she found that the front door had been broken into, and the safe in the basement had been cracked open. The trust documents were gone, along with the letter from her grandfather, and all the evidence that Bella had gathered against Carla and Jake.
She called Mick immediately, and he told her that he’d found a set of footprints leading from the back of the mansion to the road, where a black SUV had been parked. “They’re gone, Bella,” he said, his voice quiet. “They took all the evidence. Now they’re going to try to take everything from you.”
Bella sat down on the marble floor of the foyer, her eyes filling with tears. She’d worked so hard to get this far, and now it was all gone. She thought about her father, who was still in the hospital, and she thought about how she was going to save him now, without any evidence. She pulled out her phone and called her old law school professor, a woman named Professor Henderson, who had taught her everything she knew about estate law. “I need your help,” she said, her voice breaking. “They took all the evidence.”
Professor Henderson listened to her story, and she told Bella that she would come to the mansion as soon as possible. “Don’t give up, Bella,” she said. “There’s always a way to fight back. You just have to find it.”
That night, Bella sat in the empty mansion, waiting for Professor Henderson to arrive, and she thought about the ghost that had whispered her name in the middle of the night. She’d always thought that the ghost was just a figment of her imagination, but now she realized that it was real, and that it was trying to help her. She stood up and walked to the sunroom, where she’d found the original contract that Carla had forced her father to sign, and she pulled out a magnifying glass from her briefcase, looking closely at the signature line.
May you like
She’d always thought that Richard’s signature was just a messy scrawl, but now she noticed something she’d missed the first time: a tiny, hidden symbol in the corner of the signature, a small rose, which was the symbol of the Hawthorne family. Richard had drawn it there, as a way of telling Bella that he’d been forced to sign the document, and that he’d known what Carla and Jake were planning.
Bella’s heart filled with hope. She’d found the proof she needed, and she wasn’t going to let Carla and Jake get away with it. The next chapter was going to be the final one, and she was ready to win
