…but I froze when I saw under his dad’s bed. There was a small, locked metal box I had never seen before.
For ten years, I had cleaned that room, changed his sheets, checked his medicines—every corner was familiar to me. That box hadn’t been there. Or if it had… he had made sure I never noticed.
“Open it,” his son said, his voice shaking in a way I hadn’t expected from someone so arrogant just days ago.
“I don’t have the key,” I replied, keeping my distance.
“He told me… before he died,” the son stammered, “he said you would know how.”
I felt a chill crawl up my spine.
Slowly, I knelt beside the bed. My fingers brushed against the underside of the wooden frame—and there it was. A tiny piece of tape. Beneath it, a small brass key.
My heart started pounding.
I unlocked the box.
Inside were bundles of cash… more money than I had seen in my entire life. Beneath the money was a stack of envelopes, each carefully labeled in the old man’s shaky handwriting.
The top one had my name.
I hesitated, then opened it.
