Grandmother's Secret
PART 2
My breath caught as the silence of the old living room settled around me like a heavy blanket. The wooden floor creaked softly beneath my weight, as if the house itself was holding its breath to hear what Grandma had to say. Outside, the north wind howled against the single-paned glass, but inside time seemed to have stood still. The opened envelope lay heavy in my trembling hand.
The red sealing wax, decorated with the family crest that my grandfather had once worn with pride on his signet ring, crumbled into small, dark pieces that fell like dried blood onto the yellowed paper. My eyes hungrily scanned the flowing, elegant strokes of Grandma's handwriting. It was the exact same handwriting style I had seen for five months on shopping lists and doctor's appointments, but the words here carried a weight that filled the room with ice-cold tension.
"My dear Emma," the letter continued after that devastating opening. "When you read these lines, I am no longer here. The chair next to your bed is empty, and the greedy have swooped down like vultures on the scraps. I saw their faces during the notary meeting, Emma. I didn't even have to be physically present to know how your sister Laura raised her eyebrows and how your uncle Hendrik rubbed his hands when the ownership papers of the company buildings were discussed.
They thought I was going senile. They thought my mind was fogged by the medication. But my mind was never clearer than in the silence of my last evenings when you held my hand." I swallowed hard. A tear burned in the corner of my eye, but I didn't dare wipe it away for fear of missing a word. "Laura laughed about the showcase, didn't she?" the letter continued.
"She thought you would be fobbed off with a worthless piece of furniture from the late 19th century. An old oak monster full of dusty cups and cheap memories. But Laura is blinded by what glitters. She looks for gold and bank accounts, blind to what is truly of value. What she doesn't know—what no one in this family knows except you now—is that this showcase was never a piece of furniture.
It is a safe. A safe that has no numerical code, but is opened by the secret mechanism that the man who actually built this house installed twenty years ago." My heart skipped a beat. My grandfather had died twenty years ago under suspicious circumstances—at least those were the rumors that were always whispered hushedly at family celebrations. Officially it had been a sudden heart attack, but my uncle Hendrik had never wanted to speak about that night again.
And Grandma had always wrapped an icy silence around it. "Look for the carved lily motif on the left side of the lowest drawer," the letter detailed. "If you turn the wooden leaf to the left, the back wall of the top shelf unlocks. Behind it lies not only the key to the safe under the cellar floor, but also the proof of what really happened on the night of November 14, 2004.
The night your father did not die in a car accident, but was sacrificed by his own brother and sister to save the family business." My knees grew weak. My father? My father had died when I was five years old. I had always been told he had skidded on a slick road. That he had lost control of the steering wheel. Was it not an accident? Was my own family responsible for my father's death?
I looked up from the letter at the large, dark showcase standing in the corner of the living room. The oak wood suddenly seemed to assume a threatening shape in the half-light. Every carving, every contour of the cabinet seemed to whisper of secrets trapped in darkness for twenty years. My pulse hammered in my throat. With trembling legs I stood up from the wooden chair and took a step toward the cabinet.
The house seemed to creak around me, almost as if warning me. The wind hit hard against the shutters outside. I leaned forward and let my fingers glide along the underside of the cabinet. The wood felt cold and rough. My groping fingers searched for the lily motif Grandma had written about. There! In the corner I felt a fine, barely perceptible elevation.
A small, carved leaf that felt different from the rest of the carving. I applied pressure. The wood did not yield immediately. I exhaled deeply, increased the pressure on the edge of the wooden leaf, and carefully pushed it to the left. CLICK. A deep, mechanical sound echoed from inside the cabinet. A heavy, metallic unlocking sound that absolutely did not seem to belong to a 19th-century wooden piece of furniture.
With a soft creak, the back wall of the middle shelf pushed forward a few centimeters, revealing a dark cavity. My breath caught in my throat. I reached my hand into the dark space to grab the key and the documents. At that exact moment, the sound of car tires crunching over gravel echoed in the driveway outside. Headlights cut brightly through the lace curtains of the living room, illuminating the profile of the open showcase.
A car door slammed shut with a loud bang. Footsteps—hasty, heavy footsteps—approached the front door. Then the sound of a key being inserted into the front door lock and slowly turned...
PART 3
My heart raced wildly. Without thinking, I quickly pushed the mechanism of the showcase back into place. With a dull click, the wooden panel slid into position. I grabbed the wooden box with Grandma's letter from the table, ran on socks into the corner of the room, and dived behind the heavy velvet curtains just as the massive oak door swung open.
"I'm telling you, it has to be in here!" hissed a voice I would have known out of thousands. It was the voice of my uncle Hendrik. "Be quiet, Hendrik, someone's going to hear us," answered a second voice. It was my sister Laura. Her voice no longer sounded mocking or haughty like at the notary's, but shrill and nervous. The hallway light was switched on, and the yellow glow fell through the open room door.
I held my breath, pressed myself as flat as possible against the cold wall behind the curtain, and prayed my feet wouldn't stick out from under the fabric. "Emma's already gone, right?" asked Hendrik. The sound of his heavy footsteps came closer. He stepped into the living room. I could smell the scent of his expensive cigars and the cold outside air.
"She went straight home after the meeting," Laura said as she followed him. "She was a nervous wreck. She really thought Grandma loved her, but the old hag just exploited her until the last minute. Such a worthless cabinet... what a joke." "Don't laugh too early, Laura," Hendrik growled annoyed. "This 'worthless cabinet' is the only reason I'm standing here in the middle of the night.
Mother wasn't crazy. She knew we wanted to look at the company books. She knew we were looking for the originals of the 2004 partnership agreement." "Do you really think she hid it in there?" Laura's voice sounded doubtful. "In a cabinet she left open and free in the living room? That would be more than stupid, even for her." "You underestimate your grandmother," Hendrik said.
I heard the sound of wood on wood—he had arrived at the showcase. My stomach tightened. If he examined the cabinet thoroughly, he might see the traces I had just left behind. "She always played a game," Hendrik continued. "For twenty years she kept us blackmailable. She made us believe the papers about your father's fatal crash were safe at the bank, but the bank director told me yesterday that all her safe deposit boxes were cleared out three months ago.
Everything was brought into this house." "If those papers come to light, Hendrik..." Laura's voice quivered with fear. "If the police discover the car wreck was never investigated because you bribed the coroner..." "Shut your mouth!" Hendrik hissed harshly. "Do you want the whole neighborhood to hear? There's no more evidence. As long as we find these documents and burn them, no one can touch us.
The statute of limitations doesn't apply to premeditated murder, don't you understand that?" Murder. The word echoed in my head like a whipcrack. I closed my eyes and felt tears roll down my cheeks. So it was true. What was in Grandma's letter was not the delusion of a dying woman. My own uncle had murdered my father, and my sister had helped cover up the evidence to protect her wealth and status.
In the room came the sound of drawers being violently opened and slammed shut. Hendrik was searching the cabinet. "Nothing! Only worthless porcelain and old photo albums," he cursed. "Look closely, Hendrik! Maybe there's a false bottom?" urged Laura. My heart hammered so hard against my ribs I was afraid they would hear it. My fingers cramped around the wooden box I was pressing to my chest.
Inside the box was not only the letter, but also a small silver key whose function I didn't yet know. "Wait a minute..." Hendrik said suddenly. The movements in the room stopped. It grew dead silent. "What's this?" "What do you see?" asked Laura. "There's a fresh scratch on the carving of the lowest drawer. The dust is wiped away here." My blood ran cold in my veins.
I had touched the lily motif with my dusty fingers! I had left traces! "Someone was messing with this," Hendrik whispered, his voice suddenly sounding ice-cold and dangerous. "And just recently. The dust is everywhere except on this specific wooden leaf..." I heard the mechanical click again. CLICK. Hendrik had discovered the secret mechanism by accident or logical reasoning.
The back wall slid open. "My God..." Laura breathed. "It's a hidden compartment!" "It's empty," Hendrik said, his voice trembling with pent-up rage. "It's empty, goddamnit!" "That can't be!" Laura screamed softly. "Who could have..." Stillness. A long, horrible pause settled over the living room. I felt Hendrik slowly turn around. "Emma," Hendrik whispered.
"She was here. Or... she's still here." I heard slow, calculated footsteps moving across the carpet. Steps heading straight toward the heavy velvet curtain behind which I was hiding. My breath stopped completely. There was nowhere to go. The corner was a trap. The footsteps stopped right in front of the curtain. I could hear my uncle's heavy breathing. A hand grabbed the fabric of the curtain and tore it aside with a violent jerk...
PART 4
The fabric of the curtain was torn aside with an aggressive movement, but the only sight that met Uncle Hendrik's ice-cold gaze was an empty corner of the room and an open window through which the freezing night wind blew in. I was no longer standing behind the curtain. At the very last second, as Hendrik walked toward the curtain, I had used the shadow of the large grandfather clock right next to me.
I had slipped on all fours under the long, hanging tablecloth of the dining table. It had been a life-threatening gamble, but thanks to the thick Persian rug, my movement had been silent. "The window is open!" Laura yelled panically, pointing to the fluttering curtain. "She fled! She heard the steps and climbed out the window!" Hendrik walked to the window and looked out into the dark, pouring rain.
"She can't be far. The car isn't here, she's on foot." He turned angrily to Laura. "Search the whole house! If she has the documents, we can't let her leave this inheritance!" From my hiding place under the table I could see my uncle's shiny black shoes. They stood barely a meter from my face. My muscles cramped. The cold air from the floor penetrated my clothing, but sweat broke out on me.
"What if she's already at the police?" Laura asked with a trembling voice. "Without the original company deed she has nothing," Hendrik snorted. "It's her word against ours. But if she found the safe key... then she has access to the cellar." Hendrik broke off abruptly. I saw his shoes turn toward the hallway. "The cellar," he repeated more quietly.
"She probably doesn't even know where the real entrance is. We're going down. Now!" I heard their hasty footsteps leave the living room. The heavy wooden door to the cellar door located at the back of the hallway was opened with a loud creak. I heard their footsteps echo down the creaking steps until the sound faded in the depths of the foundation.
I waited three seconds, then crawled out from under the table and stood up. My whole body was trembling with adrenaline. I looked at the box in my hands. Grandma's letter was still inside, along with the silver key. I unfolded the letter further. There was a second page I hadn't read in my haste. "Emma," Grandma wrote in hasty, sloppy letters at the bottom of the page.
"If they discover the cabinet is empty, they will go to the cellar. They will believe the safe is under the wine racks—that is the trap your grandfather built twenty years ago in case Hendrik ever tried to break in. The real safe is not in the cellar. The key you have is not for a door, but for the clock. The grandfather clock in the living room." My eyes flew to the gigantic oak grandfather clock that had ticked in the corner of the room for as long as I could remember.
The clock Grandpa had always wound by hand. "Turn the clockwork back to 02:15 AM," the letter continued. "The time your father died. Insert the silver key into the keyhole of the clock weight. There you will find the recording. The recording of the last phone call Hendrik made before the car was forced off the road." My breath caught. An audio recording?
In 2004 digital dictaphones were still rare, but Grandpa had been a passionate radio amateur. He had recorded everything. I ran quietly to the large clock. The copper pendulum moved calmly back and forth: Tick. Tack. Tick. Tack. With trembling fingers I opened the glass door of the grandfather clock. I grabbed the large minute hand and began to turn it counterclockwise.
The mechanism made a protesting, scraping sound that echoed through the silent room. 12 o'clock... 9 o'clock... 6 o'clock... 3 o'clock... Down in the cellar, a dull scream of rage suddenly echoed. Hendrik had discovered that the safe under the wine racks was a dummy safe. "She's not here!" Hendrik's voice sounded, distorted by the acoustics of the stone cellar.
"She's still upstairs! Search the room!" Panic overcame me. I turned the pointer faster. 2 o'clock... fifteen minutes. 02:15. A loud click sounded deep inside the clockwork. The ticking of the clock stopped abruptly. In the copper weight on the left side, a small keyhole became visible that had previously been hidden by a slider. I inserted the silver key into the hole and turned it.
With a mechanical click, the underside of the copper weight popped open. A small, black object fell out, right into my palm. It was an old mini cassette—the kind previously used in answering machines—along with a compact, battery-powered dictaphone. At that moment I heard the cellar door open with a hard bang. "There she is!" Laura shouted from the hallway.
I looked around and spotted the figure of my uncle Hendrik in the doorway. His face was distorted with rage, his eyes wild. In his right hand he held a heavy iron tool he had brought from the cellar. "Give up, Emma," he said in an ice-cold but threatening voice as he slowly walked toward me. "You have no idea what you're doing. You're going to destroy the family business.
You're going to destroy us ." I clutched the dictaphone tightly in my fist and backed away until my back hit the edge of the showcase. There was no escape anymore. Hendrik came toward me, his gaze full of blind frenzy. He raised the crowbar to strike. At the exact moment he was about to bring the tool down, a dull bang echoed through the room. The glass of the kitchen window at the back of the house was smashed with force.
We both startled. Footsteps—multiple pairs of heavy boots—rushed through the hallway toward the living room. "Police! Hands up! Drop the weapon!" shouted a hard, authoritative voice. Two armed police officers stormed the room, their flashlights shining brightly at Hendrik. The glaring cones of light cut through the dark of the living room. Hendrik froze.
The crowbar slipped from his weakening fingers and fell onto the parquet floor with a loud clatter. "How... how do you know..." Hendrik stammered, slowly raising his hands. Behind the two police officers stepped a tall man in a dark trench coat. It was Mr. Van de Berg—the notary who had read Grandma's will only hours earlier. "I'm sorry, Hendrik," the notary said calmly, pulling a small device from his inner pocket that blinked quietly.
"Your grandmother didn't just leave a letter in the wooden box. She commissioned me to notify the police as soon as the GPS signal of the safe key was activated outside office hours. She knew exactly what you would do if you thought the inheritance was within reach." I sank down to the floor by the showcase, exhausted from the adrenaline. The police officers pressed Hendrik against the wall and put handcuffs on him while Laura wept softly on the floor.
The notary walked over to me and held out his hand to help me up. "You were very brave, Emma. Your grandmother would be very proud of you." I looked at the dictaphone in my hand. It was over. The secret that had torn my family apart for twenty years was finally revealed. My father would finally get justice. "Come," Mr. Van de Berg said kindly. "We need to go to the station to take your statement.
The evidence can be safely secured by forensics." I nodded slowly and handed the tape to the chief inspector. I put on my coat and walked out into the cold night air together with the notary. The danger was averted. Hendrik and Laura were led away in a patrol car with flashing lights. But as we arrived at the notary's car, I looked back once more at my grandmother's old house.
In the window of the top floor—the attic room that nobody ever went into and that had been closed for decades due to the risk of collapse—I saw a thin ray of light burning. And behind the glass of the attic window, a silhouette clearly emerged. It was the shape of a man. A man holding an old copper pocket watch... the exact same pocket watch my father was wearing the day he disappeared.
PART 5
My heart skipped a beat. The world around me seemed to fade. The sound of the running engine of the police cars, the drumming of the rain on the asphalt, the shouting of the police—everything was muffled. My gaze remained fixed on the small attic window of the old country house. The silhouette moved. The figure slowly brought the pocket watch to its face, as if checking the time, and then looked straight down... right at me.
"Emma? Are you okay?" Mr. Van de Berg's voice abruptly yanked me back to reality. He held the car door open for me and looked at me with concern. "There... there is someone in the attic," I stammered, pointing my trembling finger at the top floor of the house. The notary looked up at the dark facade. "In the attic? That can't be, Emma. The police searched the whole building when they came in.
Besides, that floor has been closed since the nineties due to the risk of collapse." I looked up again. The light was gone. The window was pitch black, as if nothing had ever burned there. Was it an illusion? Was my mind, flooded with adrenaline and fear, playing tricks on me? But I knew what I had seen. That pocket watch—the gold pocket watch with my father's engraved initials 'M.V.', Mark Van de Berg—was unique.
And it should never have been found in the wreckage twenty years ago. "Come," the notary urged gently. "You're in shock. It's been a long, horrible night. Let's drive to the station first." The ride to the police station took place in numbing silence. It rained continuously. Only when I sat in a sparingly lit interrogation room, with a hot cup of tea between my ice-cold hands, did reality slowly begin to sink in.
Hendrik had been arrested. Laura was being interrogated as an accomplice. The evidence of the conspiring phone call was in the hands of the investigators. After I had given my statement to a patient detective for two hours, Mr. Van de Berg re-entered the room. He carried a heavy leather briefcase. "The commissioners are done for tonight, Emma," he said.
"You can go home... or to what's left of it. But before you leave, there is one more thing I must hand over to you. Something that wasn't in the official will and that I was only allowed to give you after Hendrik's arrest." He placed the suitcase on the wooden table and snapped open the copper clasps. Inside lay a thick, leather-bound diary. The cover was worn and the edges of the pages had turned brown over time.
"Your grandmother's diary," the notary said in a deep tone. "She started writing in it the day your father disappeared. And she only stopped the night before her death." I cautiously reached out and touched the cool leather. "Why didn't she give this to the police?" "Because the police file from twenty years ago was corrupted," Van de Berg answered seriously.
"Hendrik didn't just have the coroner in his pocket, but also the police chief at the time. Your grandma knew the diary would vanish without a trace if she released it earlier. She had to wait until the old guard retired and you were old enough to bear the truth." He opened the diary to a random page in the middle. "Read this," he said, placing his finger on a specific date: November 18, 2004 —four days after my father's tragic car accident.
I leaned forward and read Grandma's fine handwriting: ‘They think I believe them. They think I am crying in grief over the death of my oldest son Mark. But I saw the coffin before they closed it. The man in that swamp was not Mark. The length was wrong. The scars on his hands were missing. Hendrik and Laura bought a corpse from the morgue to fake a murder. Mark is alive. But they are holding him captive…’ My breath caught.
My tea tipped over, and the hot liquid flowed across the wooden table, but I didn't even notice. "My... my father isn't dead?" I whispered in a hoarse voice. My entire body began to tremble uncontrollably. "He didn't die in that accident twenty years ago?" "That is what your grandmother believed," the notary said coldly and quietly. "For twenty years she searched for the place where Hendrik kept him hidden.
And the very last page of this diary, written only twelve hours before her death, contains an address." With trembling fingers I turned to the last page of the book. There, in a faint and shaky handwriting, an address was written that made my blood freeze: Nachtigallenlaan 14, Oud-Annerveen. The old powder factory. That was the dilapidated industrial site on the edge of the forest—a place that had been closed to the public for decades.
And it was barely three kilometers from my grandmother's country house. At that moment the door of the interrogation room suddenly opened. A young police officer hurried in with a file folder. "Mr. Van de Berg, Commissioner," the officer said nervously. "We have a problem at the station." "What's wrong?" asked the notary. "Uncle Hendrik... he just collapsed in his cell.
An allergic reaction or poisoning, we don't know yet. The ambulance is on the way, but he's unconscious." The police officer looked at me pityingly. "And there's something else. Laura just confessed. She said we're too late. She said 'the guardian of the powder factory' would wipe away the last traces tonight if Hendrik doesn't call by twelve..." I looked at the clock on the wall of the police station. It was 23:48. I had exactly twelve minutes left.
PART 6
Panic struck like a racing storm in my head. Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes before 'the guardian' would wipe away the last traces of the place where my father might have been held captive for twenty years. "We have to go there immediately!" I screamed, jumping up from my chair. "Emma, calm down!" The notary grabbed my shoulders. "You can't go there alone.
This is a job for the police. Commissioner, send a strike team to the old powder factory on Nachtigallenlaan immediately!" The commissioner nodded quickly and immediately spoke into his radio, but I saw the hesitation in his eyes. Starting an official backup team, applying for permits, and navigating through the heavy storm would take at least half an hour.
Half an hour... time my father didn't have. While the police officers in the hallway argued eagerly and the notary ran to the window to make a call, I looked at the wooden table. My car keys and Grandma's diary were within reach. I didn't hesitate a second. With a quick movement I grabbed the keys and the diary, slipping silently out the back door of the police station into the night.
The freezing rain whipped against my face. I jumped into my small, old compact car, started the engine with a howling noise, and pressed the gas pedal all the way down. The tires squeaked on the wet asphalt as I left the parking lot and turned onto the dark, deserted country roads. The road to Oud-Annerveen was treacherous. Tree branches lashed across the road, and visibility was barely ten meters.
My headlights laboriously cut through the dense fog and pouring rain. My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white. Is he really alive? The thought flashed through my mind. Was it possible that all those years, while I grew up believing I was an orphan, my father was kept captive just a few kilometers away? How could a person survive something like that?
And who was the 'guardian' Laura spoke of? At 23:56 I turned into the dead-end dirt road of Nachtigallenlaan. The bumpy branches of the overhanging trees scraped loudly against the side of my car. At the end of the road, the imposing, black silhouette of the old powder factory loomed. A dilapidated brick complex from the early last century, overgrown with ivy and fenced with rusted barbed wire.
I turned off the headlights and let the car coast behind a large fallen oak tree. It was dead silent except for the howling of the wind. I got out, grabbed a heavy flashlight from the glove compartment, and carefully climbed through a hole in the fence. The ground was muddy and full of debris. The complex consisted of several large halls with shattered windows.
My wristwatch read: 23:59. Suddenly I heard the deep, heavy hum of a generator starting up in the main building. Inside the factory, a dull, yellow glow lit up behind the frosted glass windows of the basement. I crept as close as possible along the brick wall to a small cellar window. I leaned forward and carefully looked through the dusty glass inside.
What I saw made my breath catch. The cellar room was furnished as a sparse but functional living space. There was an old metal bed, a table with books, and a small gas stove. But the most striking thing was the wall behind the bed: it was covered with hundreds of newspaper articles, photos, and handwritten notes. And centrally on that wall hung a large photo of me —from my childhood to my recent university graduation.
In the room stood a man with his back to the window. He wore a dark, worn coat. He was pouring the contents of a red jerrycan over the furniture and papers on the wall. "No..." I whispered panically against the window. The man stopped pouring. As if he had heard my whisper through the thick glass, he froze. Slowly, very slowly, he turned around. The light of the single incandescent bulb above his head fell fully on his face.
It was a face marked by years of deep wrinkles, grief, and captivity, but the bright blue eyes were unmistakable. They were my father's eyes. Before joy could blossom in me, however, I saw the movement behind him. From the dark shadow of the doorway behind my father stepped a second figure. The man wore heavy coveralls and held a shiny hunting rifle in his hands.
He aimed the barrel of the weapon directly at the back of my father's head. The man with the rifle looked at his watch. It was exactly 00:00. Hendrik hadn't called. The stranger cocked the hammer of the rifle with a loud, metallic click.
PART 7
The metallic sound of the hammer cocking echoed through the room as if it had happened right next to my ear. There was no time to think, no time to wait for the police. If I didn't do anything now, my father would be shot before my eyes and the whole room would go up in flames. With a scream of pure desperation, I grabbed a heavy, loose brick from the debris next to me and hurled it with full force through the cellar window.
THE GLASS SHATTERED WITH A LOUD CRASHING SOUND. "Father! Take cover!" I screamed at the top of my lungs through the opening. My father reacted with instinctive quickness born of years of constant watchfulness. He dropped flat onto the gasoline-soaked concrete floor just as the man with the rifle swung aimlessly toward the window. BANG! A deafening gunshot filled the cellar.
The buckshot punched a hole in the masonry right above the cellar window, raining a cloud of red dust and rubble over me. I ducked away, but switched my flashlight to its brightest setting and shone the beam directly through the broken window into the shooter's eyes. "What the hell..." the man with the rifle cursed, holding his hand over his blinded eyes.
My father used this second of confusion. From the floor, he kicked the shooter's legs out from under him. The armed man lost his balance and crashed backward against the wooden table with a heavy thud. The hunting rifle slipped from his hands and rattled across the floor, directly toward the broken cellar window. I didn't hesitate a second. I reached my arm through the sharp glass edges of the window, grabbed the rifle barrel, and pulled it outside.
My forearm grazed against a sharp glass point, and a cutting pain shot through my arm, but the adrenaline overrode everything. I threw the weapon as far as possible into the high grass of the factory grounds. Inside the cellar, a life-and-death struggle broke out. The shooter, a broad man with a scar running across his cheek, scrambled up and pulled a small lighter from his pocket.
"If I can't shoot you, we'll all burn together!" he screamed wildly. He spun the wheel of the lighter. A small, yellow flame ignited. The gasoline vapors in the enclosed cellar room were suffocatingly strong. A single spark would turn the whole room into an inferno. "No!" my father screamed. He lunged forward and grabbed the man's wrist before he could drop the flame onto the gasoline-soaked floor.
Both men wrestled wildly on the floor. The scarred man was younger and stronger, but my father fought with the strength of someone who had waited twenty years for this single moment of freedom. I ran to the nearest cellar door on the side of the building. The heavy wooden door was barricaded with an iron bar. With my entire weight I threw myself against the bar until it dislodged and fell to the floor with a loud bang.
I kicked the door open and stormed into the cellar just as the shooter kicked my father away. My father struck his head hard against the edge of the metal bed and fell unconscious. The shooter stood up, eyes wild. He aimed the burning lighter at the puddle of gasoline spreading to my father's feet. "Hendrik paid me to finish the job," he grinned grimly.
"No witnesses." He went to drop the lighter. "Look around you," I said in an ice-cold, trembling voice. The shooter hesitated and cast a fleeting glance upward. Behind me, in the open cellar doorway, stood not one, but three armed tactical police officers, their laser sights aimed rigidly at the shooter's chest. Outside in the driveway, the howling sirens of at least four cars blared.
"Police! Drop the lighter! Now!" The shooter froze. He looked at the red laser dots on his clothes, looked at the gasoline on the floor, and realized he had no chance. Slowly he extinguished the flame of the lighter and let the device drop onto the dry tiles. Two police officers rushed forward and forcefully pressed him against the wall. I didn't even look at the arrest.
I dropped to my knees beside the bed where my father lay. He slowly opened his eyes. His hand, rough and trembling, rose and touched my cheek. A tear cut a path through the dust on his face. "Emma..." he whispered in a hoarse, broken voice. "My little Emma... you came." "I'm here, Dad," I cried, holding his hand tight with both hands. "I'm here. It's over." He slowly shook his head as he looked at me with anxious eyes.
"It's not over, Emma... You shouldn't have come here." He grabbed my collar and pulled me close while his voice trembled with pure fear: "Hendrik wasn't the boss. Hendrik was just the errand boy. The person who kept me captive here for twenty years... is still in your family."
PART 8
My father's words struck the cellar room like an ice-cold axe blow. The police officers were handcuffing the shooter and dragging him outside while paramedics rushed into the room with a stretcher. "Hendrik... an errand boy?" I stammered, the world once more threatening to sink beneath my feet. "But the audio recording... the will... Grandma's diary..." "Your grandmother didn't know everything either," my father whispered hastily while the paramedics carefully lifted him onto the stretcher.
He was weakened, his breathing shallow, but his eyes were awake and full of urgent warning. "Hendrik had money problems. He was being blackmailed by someone higher up. Someone who wanted to take over our family's fortune through the company. Hendrik just executed the orders." "Who, Dad? Who?" I asked, walking alongside the stretcher as it was pushed through the factory corridors.
"The pocket watch..." he said laboriously. "The one who has the pocket watch... wrote the master plan." My blood froze. The pocket watch! The watch I had seen barely an hour ago in the attic window of Grandma's country house in the hands of that mysterious figure! So it hadn't been an illusion. It wasn't a ghost from the past. The mastermind behind my family's downfall was in Grandma's house at that very moment!
"Miss, you have to wait here," one of the medics said as they wheeled my father into the ambulance. "He needs to be rushed to the intensive care unit for examination. You can follow us to the hospital." The ambulance doors slammed shut, and the vehicle raced away into the cold night with howling sirens and flashing lights. I was left alone on the wet grounds of the powder factory.
The police were busy sealing off the area with police tape. Commissioner Jansen, the man who had interrogated me at the station, walked over to me. "Emma, we've identified the shooter," he said with a serious expression. "His name is Karel Brink. A convicted ex-criminal who has been on the wanted list for years. He won't talk, but we secured his cell phone.
The last number he called at 23:30 wasn't Hendrik's number." "Whose was it then?" I asked with bated breath. Commissioner Jansen looked down at his notebook. "It's an unregistered prepaid number. But the cell tower signal tracked the location of that device during the call... straight to your grandmother's country house." It was true. Everything pointed to Grandma's residence.
"There's something else strange," the commissioner continued. "My colleagues who sealed the country house after Hendrik's arrest reported that power had been turned on on the top floor. When they checked, they found a hidden door behind a wardrobe on the first floor leading to a hidden room in the attic." My stomach turned. "The attic room..." "Yes.
And Emma... in that room we found medical equipment, surveillance monitors pointed at the cellar of the powder factory, and a stack of papers with your name on it." I felt a shudder run down my spine. The person who kept my father captive all those years hadn't controlled him from a remote hideout. That person was literally living over my grandmother's head!
All those five months I cared for my grandmother, all those evenings I read to her thinking we were alone in the big, silent house... the perpetrator was sitting up in the attic watching us. "I need to go to that house," I said with determination. "Absolutely not," Jansen said sternly. "The house is a crime scene now. Our forensic teams are on their way.
You're going to the hospital to see your father." I nodded feignedly. "You're right. I'm driving to the hospital." But as soon as Commissioner Jansen turned around to give instructions to his men, I got into my car. I wasn't driving to the hospital. Not now. I couldn't rest, I couldn't breathe as long as the person who destroyed my life and my father's was walking free.
Besides, something terrible suddenly dawned on me. Grandma's letter. The wooden box. The diary. Grandma thought she was controlling everything with her will, but if someone had been living in the attic for twenty years... then that person knew exactly what was in the will. Grandma wasn't cared for by one person; she was monitored. Five minutes later I drove into the driveway of Grandma's country house once again.
The house lay dark and abandoned. The police tape fluttered wildly in the storm wind at the front door. Forensics apparently hadn't arrived yet; the patrol cars had left for the powder factory. I got out, grabbed a heavy flashlight from my car, and walked to the front door. The lock had been forced open by the police earlier in the night, so the door swung open with a creaking sound.
The smell of the old house suddenly felt different. It no longer felt like my grandmother's familiar place, but like the hideout of a stranger. I walked through the dark hallway, past the living room with the open showcase and the stopped grandfather clock. I took the creaking wooden stairs to the first floor. My heart pounded in my throat as I stood before the large oak wardrobe in the guest room.
The wardrobe stood ajar. I pushed the heavy wardrobe door aside and saw the narrow, steep wooden stairs leading into the darkness of the attic. I took my first step onto the stairs. With every step I climbed, the air became drier and dustier. When I reached the attic platform, I shone my flashlight in a circle. The room was exactly as the commissioner had described it: a small desk, monitors that now remained dark, and a simple bed.
On the desk lay a single object, illuminated by the beam of my flashlight. It was a photo. A very old family photo. I walked to the desk and picked up the photo. It was the photo from forty years ago: Grandma, Grandpa, my father as a young boy, Uncle Hendrik, and Aunt Laura. But the faces of Hendrik, Laura, and my father had been crossed out with a sharp object.
Only one person's face had been left intact. And next to the photo lay the gold pocket watch with the initials 'M.V.'—it was still ticking. Suddenly I heard a soft, creaking step behind me. "You've always been far too curious, just like your father, Emma," said a soft, familiar, and ice-cold voice in the darkness. I froze. I slowly turned around and aimed my flashlight at the figure standing in the shadow of the attic beams...
PART 9
The beam of my flashlight trembled violently as it illuminated the figure's face. My breath caught in my throat. My mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing. In the shadow of the attic beams stood a woman. She wore a stern, elegant coat. Her gray hair was pulled back tightly into a bun. Her face, which I had carefully washed and cared for every day for five months, showed no trace of the weakness or dementia she had only feigned.
"Grandma..." I stammered in a hoarse, barely audible voice. Grandmother smiled—an ice-cold, calculating smile I had never seen on her face before. She took a step forward without the cane she supposedly needed to walk. Her posture was straight as an arrow, her gaze razor-sharp. "Dear Emma," she said with a clear, strong voice. "You've made it remarkably far.
I didn't expect you to find the powder factory so quickly. You truly have the family's perseverance." "But... you're dead!" I screamed, while despair and confusion washed over me like a wave. "The notary... the funeral... the doctor who signed the death certificate!" Grandma laughed softly—a sound that made me shiver to the core. "Money buys everything, Emma.
A bribed coroner, a closed coffin, a notary who does exactly what he's told because he's been on my payroll for twenty years. Do you really think Mr. Van de Berg was on your side? He executed my script. Step by step." My head spun. "Why? For heaven's sake, why?! My father... your own son! You locked him in a cellar for twenty years! You used Hendrik!
You destroyed Laura!" Grandma's eyes turned ice-cold. The friendly gaze of the old woman I had cared for for months was completely gone. "Because your father wanted to ruin the family!" she snarled with sudden, wild rage. "Twenty years ago Mark wanted to sell the family business to strangers! He wanted to split up and give away the capital my father and grandpa had built!
I couldn't allow that. The family fortune belongs to ME. I built this empire." "So you made your own son disappear?" I whispered in horror. "I saved him from his own stupidity!" she shouted. "Hendrik thought he was smart when he cut the brake lines. Idiot. I knew about his plan. I made sure Mark was pulled out of the wreck before the car sank underwater.
I kept him alive on the factory grounds for twenty years. He was my guarantee. My blackmail tool against Hendrik and Laura. As long as Mark lived but was 'dead' to the outside world, I could keep Hendrik and Laura on a short leash. They did everything I wanted out of fear the truth would come out." "And me?" My voice cracked, tears burning behind my eyes.
"For five months... for five months I sat by your bed! I washed you, I fed you, I cried with you when you closed your eyes! Was that all a lie?!" Grandma looked at me silently for a moment. A brief, unreadable flash of emotion flickered in her eyes, but it vanished just as quickly. "You were a useful instrument, Emma," Grandma said emotionlessly. "I needed someone unsuspected.
Someone who would open the safe, follow the trail of the cassette, and put Hendrik in prison for good. Hendrik was getting rebellious. He wanted to sell the company. He had to be removed. And you... you played that part perfectly. Thanks to you, Hendrik is behind bars for attempted murder, Laura is neutralized, and the entire inheritance—every building, every bank account—has been legally transferred to the foundation I manage." "It's over, Grandma," I said, gripping my flashlight and taking a step toward the stairs.
"The tape is with the police. The shooter at the factory is caught. My father is saved! The police know the calls came from this house. You can't escape anymore." Grandma slowly shook his head and pulled a small, black device from her coat pocket. "Do you really think the police will arrest me, Emma?" she asked calmly. "A dead woman does not exist in the eyes of the law.
My passport has long been under a different name. A helicopter is waiting on the grounds behind the forest. In an hour I'll be abroad, where my billion-dollar accounts are safe." She looked at the gold pocket watch on the desk. "It's 01:15," she said. "Time to tie up the loose ends." She pressed a red button on the black device. Downstairs in the house, a series of dull, heavy detonations echoed.
The smell of smoke and chemical accelerants raced up through the wooden floors. The country house had been rigged with ignition mechanisms. "The police will think you and your father tried to burn the family secrets," Grandma said as she walked toward a hidden escape door in the back of the attic room. "A tragic family tragedy. Everyone dead... except the money." She stepped through the doorway and looked back one last time.
"I'm sorry, Emma. You really were my favorite grandchild." The heavy metal escape door slammed shut with a hard bang, and the lock clicked automatically into place. Down at the stairs, the fire blazed with raging fury. Bright, orange flames shot up through the wardrobe hole into the attic. Within seconds the smoke became so thick and suffocating that I started coughing and couldn't see my hand in front of my face.
I was trapped in a burning attic, dozens of feet above the ground, with no way out. Panically I looked around through the thick, black smoke. My eyes burned terribly. The wooden beams above my head began to crack under the heat of the fire. Then my gaze fell on the small attic window. I rushed toward it and looked outside. Down on the grounds behind the house I saw the bright lights of a helicopter whose rotors were starting up.
And on the roof of the adjacent barn I saw a shadow moving. Someone was climbing up the drainpipe toward my window. A hand smashed the attic glass into a thousand pieces. Through smoke and flames I looked into a pair of eyes I never expected to see... "Emma! Give me your hand!" shouted the voice through the storm. It wasn't the police. It wasn't my father. It was the man who, according to Grandma's papers, should have died twenty years ago first...
