Chapter 2: The Envelope
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I sat in my car outside the Tribeca building for two hours, staring at the light in the third-floor window.
Four boys.
My eyes.
My chin.
My nervous habit passed down like a family curse.
My phone lit up at 11:42 PM.
My mother.
I let it ring.
At midnight, she sent a message instead.
*"Whatever she told you — she's lying.
She always was."*
My hands went cold.
She didn't ask why I cancelled.
She didn't ask if I was safe.
She went straight to Mara.
Which meant she already knew.
The next morning I knocked on the apartment door.
Mara opened it with dark circles under her eyes and four boys eating cereal behind her.
"I need ten minutes," I said.
"You need to leave."
"Mara.
My mother texted me last night.
She knew I'd found you."
Something shifted in her face.
"What did she say?"
I showed her the message.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then she looked up, and her voice dropped to almost nothing.
"She told me you chose Brielle.
She showed me a letter.
Your signature, your words — you told me to go and never contact you again."
My chest tightened.
"I never wrote that letter."
Mara's eyes filled.
She turned away.
"There's something else," she said quietly.
"Something I should have told you the moment I saw you last night."
She walked to the kitchen counter and picked up an envelope.
Her hands were shaking.
---
What's inside that envelope — and what has his mother been hiding for six years?
May you like
The full truth is more devastating than anyone expected.
Read the complete story in the link below.
