CHAPTER 3 — WHAT MY FATHER STOLE
By sunrise, the story was already spreading across Columbus.
A millionaire attacked at his fiancée’s family home.
A bride-to-be struck in the face with a brick.
A missing man’s belongings discovered in a burned basement.
News vans gathered outside the hospital before breakfast.
Wyatt’s former company had made him locally recognizable, which meant reporters treated my suffering like the newest episode of a public scandal.
My name appeared beside photographs taken from old social media accounts.
In one picture, I was smiling at a lake.
In another, I was standing beside my mother at Melanie’s graduation.
The captions described us as a “close-knit family.”
I wanted to throw the television through the window.
Instead, I asked the nurse to turn it off.
Wyatt sat beside me with his laptop open, answering calls from his attorney and arranging private security.
My parents knew where we lived.
They knew my workplace.
They knew the venue where we had planned to marry.
Until the police found my mother and Melanie, nowhere felt safe.
At nine that morning, Detective Morales returned with a folder thick enough to make my stomach twist.
“We identified the medication found in the basement,” she said. “Sedatives, blood-pressure pills, and antipsychotic drugs.”
“Was Elias mentally ill?” I asked.
“Not according to the records we’ve located.”
Wyatt closed his laptop.
“So they drugged him.”
“It appears possible.”
“Why?”
“That’s what we need to understand.”
Morales placed the blackened photograph on the table.
“We researched the date written on the back. Twenty-nine years ago, your uncle owned forty-two acres of land south of Columbus with your father.”
I shook my head.
“My father never owned land.”
“He did. Together, the brothers inherited it from your grandfather.”
“What happened to it?”
“Four months after Elias disappeared, your father petitioned the probate court to have him declared legally incapacitated and transferred Elias’s financial authority to himself.”
“How could he do that if Elias was missing?”
“He submitted medical records stating Elias had been committed to a private psychiatric facility.”
“Were they real?”
“We’re checking.”
Morales opened the folder and showed me a photocopy of a yellowed document.
At the bottom was my father’s signature.
Above it was the name of a doctor who had supposedly examined Elias.
Wyatt read the page twice.
“This gave Gregory control of Elias’s property.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the land?” I asked.
“It was sold to a development company. Several neighborhoods and retail buildings now stand there.”
My father had worked as a warehouse supervisor for most of my childhood.
We had never been rich.
But there had always been strange moments.
Large cash purchases.
A new truck paid for without financing.
Vacations my mother claimed were “prizes.”
Melanie’s private college tuition covered without explanation.
Whenever I asked, my father said he had invested wisely.
“What was Elias’s share worth?” Wyatt asked.
“At the time of the sale, approximately eight hundred thousand dollars.”
“That was nearly thirty years ago,” he said.
“Correct.”
I understood before Morales said it.
“With interest and investments, it could be millions.”
“Potentially.”
A terrible memory rose inside me.
When I was ten, I once found a locked metal box beneath my parents’ bed. My mother caught me touching it and struck my hand so hard my fingers swelled.
She told me the box contained my father’s army papers.
My father had never served in the army.
“What did Elias mean when he wrote that my father couldn’t steal what belonged to him?” I asked.
“We believe the brothers were fighting over the sale. Elias opposed it. Gregory wanted the money.”
“And then Elias disappeared.”
“Yes.”
Wyatt’s voice was low.
“And Gregory produced documents claiming Elias was mentally incompetent.”
Detective Morales nodded.
“There is another problem.”
She removed a recent bank statement from the folder.
“The property sale money didn’t remain with your father. Much of it moved through accounts connected to a trust.”
“What trust?”
“The Davis Family Preservation Trust.”
I had never heard those words before.
“Who controls it?”
“Your mother.”
Wyatt leaned back.
“So Brenda wasn’t just helping him cover up a crime. She handled the money.”
“That is one possibility.”
I closed my good eye.
Every memory of my childhood began rearranging itself.
My mother’s obsession with appearances.
My father’s locked office.
The way they favored Melanie because she never questioned anything.
The way they called me ungrateful whenever I refused money.
When I turned eighteen, my father offered to pay for college only if I signed several documents. I read them first and realized one gave him power of attorney over my finances.
I refused.
He called me disloyal.
Melanie signed everything he placed in front of her.
They paid for her school, her apartment, her car, and her vacations.
I worked two jobs and took out loans.
For years, I believed Melanie was simply their favorite.
Now I wondered whether she had been useful to them in a way I never was.
“Where are they?” I asked.
“We located your mother’s SUV at a motel outside Lancaster.”
My pulse jumped.
“Were they there?”
“The room had been abandoned. The bedsheets were stained with blood, and we found an empty syringe.”
“Elias?”
“We believe so.”
“Was there security footage?”
“A camera captured three people entering the room. Your mother, your sister, and an older man who needed assistance walking.”
“Then he’s alive.”
“He was at that time.”
Morales showed us a grainy image.
Even blurred, I recognized him.
Elias wore the same dark cardigan from the window. Melanie held one of his arms while my mother walked behind him carrying a canvas bag.
The timestamp was 1:18 a.m.
Before the fire.
Before Detective Morales returned to the hospital.
They had moved him almost immediately after the ambulance left.
“Where did they go next?”
“We don’t know.”
Wyatt stood and walked toward the window.
“They planned an escape route.”
“That’s likely.”
“Then Gregory planned to attack Sadie.”
I looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Your father knew I would call the police. Your mother and sister knew they might need to move Elias. The motel room, the medication, the vehicle—it wasn’t improvised.”
Morales’s expression confirmed it.
“We’re treating the assault as part of a larger plan.”
“But why attack me that night?”
The answer was obvious, but I didn’t want to say it.
Wyatt did.
“Because we were announcing the wedding date.”
My family had demanded for months that I leave Wyatt.
At first, they accused him of being arrogant.
Then they claimed he was controlling me.
When neither argument worked, Melanie began insisting she was better suited for his new life.
My parents agreed.
They didn’t want Wyatt because they loved him.
They wanted access to his money.
And they believed I was standing in the way.
“Did they expect the brick to kill me?” I whispered.
Morales did not soften the truth.
“A strike to that area could have been fatal.”
Wyatt turned away from the window.
His face went pale.
My father might not have been trying to scar me.
He might have been trying to murder me.
A nurse entered to check my medication. When she finished, a security officer appeared behind her holding a small padded envelope.
“This was delivered to the front desk for Ms. Davis.”
Wyatt immediately stepped between the envelope and my bed.
“From whom?”
“No return address.”
Morales took it.
“Has it been screened?”
“The hospital security team checked for hazardous materials.”
She opened it carefully.
Inside was an old brass key and a folded piece of paper.
The message consisted of one sentence.
Ask Gregory what happened beneath the red barn.
Below it was an address outside Circleville.
Detective Morales studied the note.
“Do you recognize the handwriting?”
I shook my head.
Wyatt looked at the key.
“Could Elias have sent this?”
“He’s being held by Brenda and Melanie,” I said.
“Maybe someone is helping him.”
Morales placed both items into evidence bags.
“The address belongs to a farm currently owned by a shell corporation.”
“Connected to my parents?”
“We’ll find out.”
She turned to leave, but I stopped her.
“Detective.”
“Yes?”
“What if the person who sent that knows where Elias is?”
“Then we need to identify them before your mother does.”
My phone rang on the table.
The screen displayed an unknown number.
Morales motioned for everyone to remain quiet and activated the recording function on her own phone.
Wyatt answered mine on speaker.
No one spoke at first.
Then I heard breathing.
Slow.
Weak.
A man whispered one word.
“Sadie?”
My entire body went cold.
“Uncle Elias?”
A choking sound came through the line.
“Don’t trust—”
The call broke into static.
“Don’t trust who?” I cried.
A woman’s voice suddenly replaced his.
My mother.
“You should have accepted what happened to your face,” Brenda said calmly. “Now you’re going to lose much more.”
The line went dead.
Detective Morales immediately called for a trace.
Wyatt took my hand.
But my attention remained fixed on my phone.
Elias had tried to warn me.
He hadn’t finished the sentence.
Don’t trust.
My father?
My mother?
Melanie?
Or someone close enough to me that I had never considered them dangerous?
Ten minutes later, Morales received the trace result.
May you like
The call had come from a prepaid phone near the address written on the note.
The farm with the red barn.
