Chapter 9 - Elena Left Sophia One Warning
Sophia searched her mother’s storage boxes.
At the bottom of an old suitcase, she found a sealed envelope.
Inside was one page.
If anyone from the Whitmore family ever comes looking for you, do not
accept money before you understand why they are offering it.
Sophia sat on the floor.
Elena had known.
Maybe not everything.
But enough.
The letter said Eleanor had once tried to make things right.
Then contact stopped.
Elena assumed Richard had intervened.
She wrote:
I chose peace because I was tired. That does not mean what happened was
fair.
Sophia cried for the first time since the rooftop.
Not because of the money.
Because her mother had carried the truth alone.
Adrian sat beside her.
“She was protecting you.”
Sophia wiped her face.
“Maybe.”
Then she looked at the letter.
May you like
“Or maybe she was exhausted.”
Both could be true.
