Chapter 22 - The Missing $186,400Investigators traced the missing money.
Only $74,000 had gone toward Robert’s development scheme.
The rest had been transferred elsewhere.
Claire claimed she didn’t know why.
Melissa eventually found the answer.
Robert had been paying someone.
A private investigator named Samuel Pike.
Pike had followed Anna for nine years.
Photographs documented her apartments, workplaces, and visits to the farm.
Robert knew exactly where Anna was.
He had always known.
Anna stared at the surveillance photographs spread across Daniel’s kitchen table.
“He let you believe I was dead while he watched me live.”
Daniel shook his head.
Anna found one photograph especially disturbing.
It showed Rachel meeting her outside a coffee shop five years earlier.
Daniel looked at Anna.
“You met Rachel?”
Anna nodded.
“Once.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She found me.”
“How?”
“She followed one of Robert’s old payments.”
Daniel struggled to process it.
“What did you tell her?”
“Everything I could.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because she wanted proof first.”
Anna began crying.
“She said you had spent your whole life loving people who lied to you. She didn’t want to destroy your family unless she could prove it.”
Daniel looked at Rachel’s frozen image.
“She was protecting me.”
“Yes.”
“And that kept her alone.”
Anna nodded.
Daniel understood the pattern again.
Secrets disguised as protection.
Silence disguised as love.
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He finally said:
“Nobody protects me with lies anymore.”
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