I hid the evidence in Storage Unit 108. Don’t confront Grace until you’ve seen it. Don’t trust anyone in that house. They took your freedom, Michael, but don’t let them take the truth too. I love you. Dad.
The groundskeeper’s name was Don Julian. He gave me some cash so I could take the bus to a storage facility in the city.
“Your father used to come here when he was already very sick,” he told me. “He said a son shouldn’t leave prison empty-handed.”
Storage Unit 108 sat at the end of a dusty hallway lined with rusted metal doors. The key turned effortlessly in the lock.
When I rolled up the metal door, I didn’t find old furniture or boxes of clothes.
I found a room full of evidence.
There were filing cabinets, envelopes, and folders labeled in black marker:
BANKS.
FAKE INVOICES.
IAN.
GRACE.
WILL.
On a table sat a USB drive with a handwritten note.
Watch this first.
I plugged the drive into the cheap phone I’d been given when I was released. The video took a moment to load.
My father appeared on the screen.
He was thin, yellowish, his eyes sunken deep into his face. Behind him I could see his workshop and an old photograph of my mother.
“Michael,” he said, struggling to breathe. “If you’re watching this, you’ve been released. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there waiting for you at the gate.”
I covered my mouth to keep from breaking down.
“You didn’t steal anything. Ian did. He created fake suppliers to siphon money out of the construction company. When the audit began, Grace gave him your passwords. She also gave him the key to your apartment. They planted fake files on your computer.”
My world split apart.
“They also forged my signature to change my will while I was sedated during chemotherapy. There are medical records, emails, receipts, and recordings. Grace claimed she was taking care of me, but she kept me imprisoned in my own house.”
My father closed his eyes for a moment.
“And if she told you I’m buried beside your mother, she lied about that too. Don’t let her decide where my story ends.”
The video ended.
I spent hours going through the folders. There were multimillion-dollar transfers, messages between Ian and a corrupt accountant, photographs of my computer open on dates when I was out of town.
Then I found a red folder.
Its label read:
CONFESSION.
Inside was a signed statement from Ian admitting he’d used my passwords to divert company funds.
But underneath it was the document that took my breath away.
The funeral records.
Grace and Ian hadn’t just sent me to prison.
They had hidden my father’s body.
And the address written there proved that they hadn’t shown him mercy even after death.
I didn’t go back to Grace’s house that night.
Before prison, I would have kicked down the door. I would have screamed. I would have given Ian exactly the kind of scene they needed to paint me as violent all over again.
