All Chapters of You Lost Me When You Found Her: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

We didn't go to the old property that night. Adrian wanted to, and a part of me wanted the same thing, but I refused to walk into a place someone had specifically warned us to avoid when we didn't even know who was watching us. After everything that had happened, rushing there in the darkness felt less like courage and more like walking willingly into a trap. We agreed to wait until morning, when we could approach the property in daylight and think clearly enough to notice anything that might be out of place.I barely slept.The warning kept returning to my mind, but strangely, it wasn't the words themselves that disturbed me most. It was how the message had arrived. We hadn't told anyone about our plans. Adrian and I had only discovered the property's existence minutes before the warning appeared on my phone, which meant someone had been close enough to know what we were discussing. The realization stayed with me throughout the night. Whoever had been watching us wasn't simply reac

I couldn't hear anything except the sound of my own breathing as Adrian pulled me farther away from the property. We didn't stop until the old house was almost completely hidden behind the trees, but even then, I kept looking back. Christopher's voice continued to echo in my mind, along with the way he had called the man's name as though they had known each other for years. Until that moment, Christopher had been the person helping us connect the pieces of the mystery. He had given us information, warned us about dangers and helped us understand Lucas's discoveries. Now, for the first time, I couldn't tell whether he had been helping us uncover the truth or carefully guiding us toward the version of it he wanted us to believe.Adrian eventually stopped near the road and turned toward me. He asked what I had heard, even though there was no reason to pretend he hadn't heard it himself. I told him that Christopher knew the man, and that the familiarity in his voice had been impossible t

The door opened slowly, and Adrian immediately moved in front of me, shielding me with his body as the narrow opening widened. I held the folder tightly against my chest and tried to steady my breathing, but my mind was racing through every possibility. Whoever had locked us inside knew exactly where we were. They knew about the folder, they knew about the camera, and judging by the deliberate way the key had turned, they had no intention of pretending this was an accident. The silence outside the room made everything worse because we couldn't hear anyone else moving, yet someone had clearly been standing there long enough to unlock the door. A woman stepped into the doorway. For one terrible second, I thought it was Christopher. Then she moved farther into the light, and I realized I had never seen her before. She looked to be in her late fifties, with dark hair streaked with grey and a tired expression that suggested she had spent many years carrying something she couldn't put d

For a moment, the entire world seemed to stop.I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I could barely convince myself to breathe as I stared at the woman standing at the end of the alley. Every part of me recognized her before my mind could accept what my eyes were seeing. The shape of her face, the familiar softness in her eyes, the way she stood with one hand slightly clenched at her side were things I had carried in my memories for years. I had remembered them so many times that I had eventually convinced myself they belonged to someone who no longer existed.But she was standing there.Alive.My mother.The word formed silently in my mind, but I couldn't bring myself to say it. My throat felt tight, and my body seemed caught between wanting to run toward her and wanting to run away. For years, I had imagined what I would do if I ever saw her again. Sometimes I imagined throwing my arms around her. Other times I imagined demanding to know why she had abandoned me. I had rehearsed a thou

For several seconds, nobody moved. My father's final words seemed to hang in the air long after the recorder went silent. Your mother wasn't the one who betrayed me. It was Adrian's father. I looked at Adrian, expecting anger, denial or disbelief, but what I saw on his face was something much harder to describe. He looked as though the ground beneath everything he had ever believed had suddenly disappeared. The man he had spent his entire life trying to understand had just been connected to the destruction of mine, and there was no easy way to separate the truth from everything Adrian had once believed about his family.My mother was crying silently, her eyes fixed on the ground as though she couldn't bear to look at either of us. Margaret kept the gun raised, her attention locked on the man across the road, while Christopher stood between them with an expression that revealed just how dangerous the situation had become. And the man who had admitted to ordering my father's death loo