The younger man stared at her as if the entire room had started spinning.

His father looked down at the report again, slower this time, as if hoping the words would change.

But they did not.

The woman opened her eyes and looked straight at the older man.

Her voice was weak, but steady.

“I tried to tell the truth that night,” she said. “But you paid the doctor to keep me quiet.”

The younger man frowned. “What night?”

The woman’s breathing shook.
“The night of the accident. The night your brother died.”

The father’s face instantly hardened.

“Enough,” he said. “Don’t you dare—”

But she kept going.

“I was unconscious when they brought me in. Your elder son was already gone. But before that… before the crash…” Her voice cracked. “He knew.”

The younger man stepped closer to the bed.
“Knew what?”

She looked at him through tears.

“That the baby was his.”

Silence.

The younger man’s knees nearly gave out.

His father’s hand clenched around the report so tightly the paper bent.

“No,” the younger man whispered. “No… my brother is dead.”

The woman nodded, crying harder now.

“Yes,” she said. “And your father made sure no one would ever know he left behind a child.”

The older man slammed the file onto the table.

“I did it to protect this family!”

The younger man slowly turned toward him, horrified.

But the woman wasn’t finished.

With shaking fingers, she reached beneath her pillow and pulled out a second envelope.

“There’s more,” she whispered.

The father’s eyes widened instantly.

Because he recognized it.

It was his dead son’s handwriting on the front.

And on the envelope were five words that made his blood run cold:

If anything happens to me…