HER MOTHER SLAPPED HER AT THE DINNER TABLE—THEN DAD’S ATTORNEY WALKED IN AND SAID, ‘THERE’S BEEN A MISTAKE ABOUT WHO OWNS THIS HOUSE.
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Chapter 1 / 6
CHAPTER 1: The Key Beneath the Silence
The room felt smaller after the attorney left.
No one spoke. Not Mara. Not her mother. Not Paige.
Only the faint ticking of the antique wall clock—her father’s favorite—filled the suffocating silence.
Mara turned the tiny brass key over in her palm.
“Where is the workshop?” she asked quietly.
Judith’s lips tightened. “That place is irrelevant.”
“It was important enough for Dad to leave me the key.”
Paige scoffed, but her voice trembled slightly. “It’s just an old storage space.”
Mara met her eyes.
“No,” she said. “It’s not.”
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And for the first time since the funeral, Mara saw something crack in her sister’s carefully polished confidence.
Fear.
