Chapter 8 - The Birthday Card They Stole and the Message Hidden in Its Paper
I called the police before stepping inside.
I waited downstairs beneath a flickering light.
My neighbor Mrs. Alvarez brought me tea.
She had watched me grow up.
She did not ask why I was crying.
She simply sat beside me.
Investigators photographed the apartment.
The missing card bothered Agent Reyes.
“Why take paper?” she asked.
I remembered my mother's habit.
She wrote recipes between greeting cards.
Sometimes she tucked money into their folds.
Mara had photographed the card at the terminal.
We enlarged the image.
A line of tiny numbers appeared near the edge.
It looked like a printer defect.
The forensic examiner disagreed.
“It may be a storage reference.”
We traced it to a private records archive.
The account had been opened under Evelyn's name.
The archive required two keys.
One physical.
One digital.
I still had the terminal key.
The digital key was embedded in the card image.
Victor had stolen the original too late.
We accessed the archive under a court order.
Inside were thousands of documents.
Contracts.
Donations.
Photographs of forged signatures.
And a memo from Dante's father.
The memo ordered Victor removed.
Dante's father had discovered the theft.
He had tried to stop it.
For years Dante had believed otherwise.
I watched him read the memo twice.
May you like
His shoulders began to shake.
He did not hide his tears from me.
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