Lahat ng Kabanata ng Love Didn’t Save Us. It Just Made the Fall Hurt More : Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

The private investigator’s office sat on the third floor of a dying building. The stair rails were rusted, paint peeling in long strips like shed skin. The hallway light above buzzed and flickered as Elijah climbed, every step echoing louder than it should have. The door at the end was dull gray, its glass panel covered in grime, letters barely visible through the dust. C. TORRES Discreet Services. No title. No promises. The kind of name that said: I’ll do the job, but don’t ask me twice. Gabe had found him, of course. Said Torres had once been the man powerful men called when they wanted something buried so deep no one could exhume it. The kind of man Elijah’s father had trusted. “He doesn’t pick sides,” Gabe had warned on the drive over. “He picks whoever pays him more. That’s all you need to remember.” Elijah had nodded, but the truth was, he wasn’t sure what he believed anymore. About his father. About Gabe. About himself. He knocked once. The hollow sound traveled down

The knock came too early. The kind of early that didn’t belong to mornings but to interruptions. Elijah froze in the hallway. His body was still buzzing from the sleepless night, his mind replaying every word, every silence between him and Gabe. They hadn’t spoken since the fight. Not a word. Not even a glance. The knock came again. Firm. Unapologetic. Gabe stirred on the couch, groggy, eyes opening to the thin light spilling through the blinds. Elijah motioned for him to stay put and crossed to the door. He braced himself maybe for a package, maybe for another veiled threat slid under their welcome mat. But when he opened it, the last person he expected stood there. Cassia Vale. His sister. Sharp jaw. Polished hair that gleamed like it had been brushed through glass. The same cold eyes that had once cut him down at family dinners without her voice ever rising. She hadn’t changed. Not even a crack in the armor. Except this time, she looked scared. “Elijah,” she said, voic

The file came at 3:14 a.m.No message.No subject line.Just a silent ping in his inbox and a folder labeled:Request Logs – E. Vale ConsentElijah’s hands trembled as he dragged the folder onto his desktop. He hesitated, heart pounding like the world might crack open with a single click.But he opened it.Three documents waited inside, cold and clinical:A login record showing who had accessed the consent form on the day it was signed.A PDF of metadata from the original scan.A list of administrative approvals tied to the same timestamp.No context. No explanation. Just evidence.He clicked the first file.And froze.The login trail was too clean, scrubbed down to bare bones. Only one ID appeared. One name.VALE_MARIA – Supervisory OverrideElijah’s throat tightened. He blinked, leaned closer, reread the screen.No.No.Not possible.Maria Vale.His mother.Dead two years before the crash.She’d withered away in a hospital bed, her body eaten alive by pancreatic cancer, but her voic

Elijah stood across the street from the tall, black glass building that cut into the skyline like a blade. Maxwell & Carrington LLP. Not just lawyers. They were his father’s shadow. The fixers, the erasers, the men who could make a scandal disappear with one memo and a well-timed fire. They didn’t just bury bodies; they buried memories. And somewhere inside that tower was the truth about him the crash, the forged signatures, the projects whispered about in locked rooms. He wore a cheap black hoodie, cap pulled low, sunglasses hiding most of his face. Not perfect, but enough to be anyone but Elijah Vale. He’d booked an appointment under a fake name: Eli Carr. Simple. Bland. Forgettable. For once in his life, he was grateful to be a shadow. He crossed the street and pushed through the revolving doors. The lobby hummed with wealth. Cold marble floors. Stainless steel elevators that gleamed like they’d never been touched by human hands. A receptionist in a fitted suit barely lifted

The apartment was too quiet. The kind of quiet that presses against your ears until it feels like a weight. Elijah sat at the kitchen table, motionless, the envelope open in front of him. It looked ordinary yellowed edges, a faint coffee stain on one corner but it wasn’t. It was a relic, a weapon, a confession from the grave. His pulse thundered as he reached inside and pulled out two pages. One typed, crisp and official. The other handwritten, softer, raw with ink that had smudged in places as if tears had fallen there first. He picked up the typed sheet. His eyes traced the lines legal headers, lists, careful phrasing. Words meant to bind, to outlive her. It was her will. The second will. The one hidden. The one his father had buried beneath lies. His mother had not left everything to her husband. Not to the company. Not to Cassia. To him. Elijah Vale. Full control. Full power. The words burned into his brain, so heavy they didn’t feel real. And at the bottom, her signa