He swallowed again.
“And Linda helped him.”
The air left my lungs.
My father’s voice cracked.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see it until the damage was done. And by then… you were already inside.”
He wiped his face with the back of his hand.
“I tried to undo it. Quietly. I collected everything. I hid it. I transferred what I could to protect it. I didn’t confront them because… I was dying, Eli. And if I went to war in my own house, I would’ve died alone, in a room full of people who hated me.”
He exhaled.
“So I did what I could.”
His gaze locked onto the camera.
“I left you the truth,” he said. “And I left you a choice.”
Then he said something that made the hair on my arms rise.
“If you go back to Linda without this evidence secured,” he warned, “you won’t just lose the proof. You might lose your life.”
The video ended.
The screen went black.
And I realized, with a slow, sick dread, that my father hadn’t been paranoid.
He’d been preparing.
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