All Chapters of The Heart Never Forgets: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

My father’s whisper echoed in my head long after I left the hospital.It followed me through traffic, through red lights and rain-smeared glass, through the silence of my apartment.I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at nothing, hearing those words again and again until they stopped sounding like a sentence and started sounding like a confession.Daniel wasn’t running. He was bleeding quietly, deliberately, so others could breathe.That truth landed slowly, painfully, like a bruise forming beneath the skin. Every cold word he’d spoken to me. Every wall he’d built. The confession. The Will. The Swiss account. It wasn’t betrayal.It was bait.I opened my laptop with shaking hands. The Swiss account number from the Will stared back at me, cold and precise.Now I looked again, slower. Carefully. Like the truth might flinch if I moved too fast.I traced transactions from the numbered Swiss account, my hands steady even as my heart raced. Small transfers at first. Then patterns. Names I d

I reached for his hands, shocked by how cold his fingers were.“No, you are not finished,” I said firmly. “You’re the man who built an empire from nothing. You’re not done yet, Daniel. You don’t just give up.”He looked at our joined hands, then back at me. He took a long, shaky breath and squeezed my fingers.“You’re right,” he muttered, his jaw tightening. “He thinks he won. But I didn't give that mole the real location. I gave him a dummy site. I hid the real contract in a private vault. Trust before I turned myself in for that arson charge. I thought I was being clever. I thought I was being safe.”“We’ll go there together,” I said firmly. “Now.”The taxi ride to the financial district felt like it took a lifetime. I watched the streetlights blur into long ribbons of yellow gold against the glass.Beside me, Daniel was a statue of tension, his leg bouncing nervously. We didn't talk. We couldn't. The air between us was charged with the kind of electricity that comes right before a

I stared at the grainy screen. I couldn’t look away from the video. A murder.The video showed the interior of the warehouse, but it wasn't an office. It was a dark corner where two men were struggling. In one swift, cold motion, a man raised a heavy iron pipe and struck.The sound of the impact echoed through the tablet’s speakers, followed by the sight of the body being dragged toward the center of the room just as the first spark of the warehouse fire was lit.Daniel didn’t move. He sat there like a statue carved from ice. My father let out a long, shuddering sigh from the bed, closing his eyes as if he could finally stop running from the image he’d carried in his mind."There's more," Daniel whispered. His voice was so flat, so devoid of emotion, it scared me more than his anger ever had.He clicked away from the video file and opened a single, encrypted document titled Final Statement. I watched his thumb tremble slightly as he tapped the screen. The file loaded slowly, a wall of

I rushed to the window. Far below, blue and red lights danced across the rain-soaked pavement. Black SUVs were swarming the entrance, and men in heavy gear were already spilling out, shields raised."They're not here for the arson," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow."No," Arthur said, his voice trembling. "I just got a ping from the courthouse. The warrant was just signed. It’s a first-degree murder charge for Marcus Thorne. They’re treating you as armed and dangerous, Daniel."Daniel looked at the door, then at me, then at the phone still showing the live feed of my father’s hospital room. He was trapped. We were all trapped. The walls of the office felt like they were closing in, the expensive wood and gold accents suddenly looking like the bars of a very expensive cage."Hide the drive, Jane," Daniel said, his voice suddenly firm, grabbing my shoulders. "Whatever happens, do not give it to them. Not yet."

The blue glow from my laptop screen was the only light in the room, and it felt harsh, like a cold finger poking at my tired eyes.The message on the screen was a nightmare in plain text: "Enter the name of the one you’re willing to lose, if you dare open the file."I felt a lump in my throat that I couldn't swallow. Who would I even type? My father? Daniel? The very thought made my stomach do a sick little flip. It felt like a sick game, the kind a bully plays before they push you down.Then, a thought hit me, sharp and cold. This wasn’t a password. It was a trap. Daniel had told me once that the most dangerous doors are the ones that ask you to identify yourself before they open. If I typed a name, any name, I was telling a computer somewhere exactly where Jane Riley was sitting.I wasn't opening a file. I was ringing a dinner bell for a shark.I reached out and yanked the micro-drive from the side of the laptop. The screen went black instantly, and for a second, I was blind in the