**THE READING OF THE WILL**
The lawyer cleared his throat, the sound echoing in the otherwise silent room. My brother glared at me, his jaw tight. We hadn’t spoken since Dad passed. Probably wouldn’t have, if not for this.
“To my daughter, Sarah,” the lawyer droned, “I leave the sum of one dollar.” A stunned silence hung in the air. One dollar? After all those years of caring for him?
Mark smirked, a cruel twist of his lips. Then the lawyer continued, “…and to her I also bequeath the contents of the locked safe in the basement.” ⬇️
The smirk vanished from Mark’s face, replaced by a look of dawning horror. My own breath hitched. A locked safe? Dad had never mentioned a safe. The lawyer, a portly man named Mr. Finch, produced a key, its tarnished brass glinting under the chandelier. “The combination was never changed,” he added, a cryptic note in his voice.
We descended to the basement, the air thick with dust and the scent of damp earth. The safe, nestled in a shadowed corner, looked ancient, its steel surface scarred and pitted. Mark, usually so arrogant, fidgeted, his eyes darting around. I felt a tremor of anticipation, a strange mix of fear and excitement. The key turned, grating in the lock. With a groan of rusty protest, the heavy door swung open.
Inside, nestled on faded velvet, wasn’t gold or jewels, but a single, worn leather-bound journal. Mark let out a strangled cry, lunging for it. I blocked him, my anger a sudden, searing flame.
“This is mine,” I hissed, my voice shaking with a mixture of fury and a mounting suspicion.
“No! It’s ours! Father’s legacy!” Mark shrieked, his eyes wild. He grappled with me, the journal clutched between us like a prize.
Mr. Finch, surprisingly, intervened, separating us with surprising strength. “Gentlemen,” he said, his voice tight with authority. “The will stipulates that the contents of the safe are to be examined jointly. Further disputes must be settled legally.”
Reluctantly, we sat down, the journal open between us. The script inside was elegant, spidery, and penned in a language neither of us recognised. It was a code. As we deciphered it slowly, painstakingly, the truth emerged, shattering the image we held of our father. It wasn’t a testament to a simple life, but to a secret one, filled with clandestine meetings, hidden identities, and a life-altering truth. Dad wasn’t who we thought he was. He was a spy, and the journal detailed his final, most dangerous mission, a mission that involved a hidden fortune, a betrayal, and a network of international intrigue.
Mark, his face ashen, stared at the last entry. It detailed a hidden account in a Swiss bank, an account that contained millions, linked to a code word – a word that was our mother’s maiden name. He was dumbfounded, as was I. He had always assumed Dad had left him everything; he never knew our mother’s maiden name. She had run away from our father when Mark was a child and neither he nor I knew her whereabouts.
The final entry was a single sentence, written in English: “My deepest regret is the lies I told, and the truth I hid from my daughters.”
The room fell silent again, heavier this time. The journal didn’t resolve our conflict; instead, it deepened the mystery and amplified our shared loss. We looked at each other, not with hatred, but with a dawning understanding of the man we never truly knew, a man whose legacy was far more complex, and far more dangerous, than a simple will could ever reveal. The dollar was meaningless compared to the inheritance of secrets that now bound us together, and threatened to consume us. Our future, however uncertain, now intertwined with our father’s shadowy past. The reading of the will had just begun.