Three years after going to prison, I came home to find my father gone and my home no longer mine

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Three years after going to prison, I came home to find my father gone and my home no longer mine

I tried to push past her to get to his old room, but then I heard laughing coming from the hallway. My stepbrother, Carter, a total deadbeat who’d spent the last decade drowning in gambling debts, was walking down the stairs, smirking at me.

Reagan stepped in my way, told me to get the hell out, and threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave right then.

I headed straight for the cemetery. My dad had always said he wanted to be buried next to Mom. But when I got to her plot, there was no sign of him.

As I was searching around, the old gardener noticed me and asked if I was Finnley. I was completely thrown off. He reached into his jacket, pulled out a thick yellow envelope, and handed it to me, saying my dad had left it for him to give to me.

Inside was a key to a storage unit and a letter in my father’s handwriting.

It started with: Son, if you are reading this, it means Reagan is already lying to you.

I took the next bus to an industrial neighborhood on the edge of town and found the storage facility. When I unlocked the unit and stepped inside, I didn’t find dusty old furniture or junk. The place looked like a police precinct. It was packed with boxes, files, financial statements, and evidence of forgery.

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Right in the middle of it all was a USB drive with a sticky note on it: Watch this first.

I plugged the drive into my cracked phone screen, and my dad’s face appeared. He looked incredibly thin and sick, but his voice was steady.

He started by apologizing. He said he was so sorry he never came to visit me in prison, but by the time he realized Reagan and Carter had set me up, they had already completely isolated him.

According to Dad, Carter was the one who had been draining the company’s accounts to cover his massive casino debts. Reagan had stolen my password, planted forged documents on my computer, and used a spare key to frame me.

But then he dropped the real bomb. He said that if Reagan had told me he was buried next to my mother, she was lying.

The next day, I took everything to a free legal clinic and met a lawyer named Nora. She went through the evidence, looked up at me, and said, “We’re going to war.”

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