I Invited My Girlfriend to Move In – What Happened Next Surprised Me

I pulled it open. Inside, beneath a stack of innocuous bills and old letters, was a worn, leather-bound book. A ledger. My father’s ledger. It looked old, ancient, filled with neat, precise handwriting. I flipped it open, my hands shaking so violently I could barely hold it steady.

It wasn’t a business ledger. It was a record. A record of transactions. Payments. Pay-offs. To a name I knew. A name that had haunted my family for years. The name of the man who had caused the accident that took my brother’s life. The man who was never prosecuted, never punished, whose family disappeared overnight. A deep, dark wound I rarely spoke of.

And then, a photo tucked inside the ledger. An old, faded photograph. A group of people smiling. In the center, my father. Next to him, the man who killed my brother. And between them, a little girl. A girl with the same piercing eyes, the same crooked smile, the same distinctive birthmark on her neck as the woman I loved.

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