Chapter 135

Chapter 135
Arthur's POV

The string came loose beneath my fingers, and the bundle of files spread open on my desk like a long-kept secret finally deciding to breathe. I reached for the first page, my thumb brushing against the worn paper, and my eyes immediately landed on my mother’s handwriting—small, steady, the kind that carried a quiet firmness.

"Arthur, I probably should have handed over this to you myself but I decided to let time and fate decide."

For a moment, I just sat there, staring at the ink as if her hand had only just left the page. My chest tightened, not painfully, but in that aching way memories often return—soft, uninvited, and bittersweet. She had always been like that—cryptic, deliberate, never rushing truth into my hands before she felt I was ready. I smiled faintly, the corner of my mouth tugging upward despite myself. Typical of her. Even now, she was teaching me patience through paper and ink.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and turned the page. At first, I expected… well, I didn’t know what I expected. Family notes, estate papers, maybe financial summaries. But the further I flipped, the clearer it became that this was not ordinary documentation.

Neat columns of figures, dates, and signatures filled the pages, but it wasn’t the orderliness that caught me—it was the names. Names of people I knew. Names of people my father had dealt with. Major clients, partners who had kept his empire afloat. And woven between those names, like shadows hiding in margins, were the kinds of details that weren’t meant to see daylight.

When I saw Victor Cain’s name scrawled across one of the ledgers, I stopped. My eyes skimmed line after line, piecing together not just deals but habits, indulgences, corrupt practices so brazen they almost mocked the idea of discretion. I scoffed, a short, sharp sound that broke the silence of the study. The man prided himself on power, on untouchability. Yet here, in black and white, were all the things he had buried—his weaknesses, his failures, his greed catalogued like a confession.

I leaned back in my chair, the leather creaking under me, and let the page fall slightly from my fingers. For so long, I had been on the defensive, calculating my steps carefully around him, wary of his influence. But now… now the ground had shifted. These documents weren’t just papers; they were leverage. And in the right hands—my hands—they could turn the balance entirely.

The smirk came unbidden, curling my lips as a strange sort of clarity settled over me. Victor Cain had always walked into rooms like he owned them, like the rest of us were playing catch-up. But for the first time, I didn’t feel behind. For the first time, I saw him for what he really was—fragile beneath the armor, vulnerable in places he thought no one could touch.

I set the file down carefully, almost reverently, though inside my thoughts were racing. Every deal, every secret was a thread. And I had just been handed the entire web.

“Time and fate,” I murmured to myself, glancing back at my mother’s note. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to receive this before, because only now did I know exactly what to do with it.

And with that realization, the smirk deepened. Because the game had just changed, and this time, I wasn’t playing to survive, I was definitely playing to win.
Then as I went back to continue flipping through the pages of the documents, an envelope slipped from between the thick stack of documents, tumbling soundlessly onto the polished wood of my desk.

For a second, I froze, my hand hovering mid-air as though I’d just unearthed something I wasn’t ready to see. It was a simple white envelope, aged at the edges, sealed and untouched, but the sight of my father’s handwriting scrawled across the front hit me harder than any blow ever could.

My chest tightened, my breath hitching before I even realized I was holding it. My name—just my name—written in the bold, precise strokes I knew so well. He had written it himself. No assistant. No lawyer. No typewriter ink to separate him from me. This was him. My father.

I reached for it slowly, almost reluctantly, the tips of my fingers brushing the paper as though it might disintegrate beneath my touch. It felt heavier than it should have, as though the weight of everything he hadn’t said in life was sealed inside it. I turned it over, staring at the crease of the flap, the unbroken wax seal that seemed to mock me with its quiet restraint. He had left me this—knowing I would one day find it, knowing I would one day sit in this very spot and feel my pulse hammering in my ears while debating whether or not to tear it open.

For a moment, I didn’t know what to do. My mind scattered in a hundred directions, thoughts colliding with memories I had long buried. What could he have possibly written to me? An explanation? A confession? A plea for forgiveness? Or something far worse—a final manipulation to bind me to his legacy in ways I hadn’t yet imagined.

The documents spread out before me already revealed enough to make me question everything I thought I knew about him. His alliances, his betrayals, his games with Victor Cain and others like him—they painted a picture I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep staring at. And yet here, in this sealed envelope, was something entirely different—personal and direct, something for me alone.

I held it up to the light, half-tempted to tear it open, half-terrified of what it might say. My fingers itched against the seal, but I couldn’t bring myself to break it. Not yet. Not when I wasn’t sure if I was ready to let his voice echo through me again, not when I wasn’t sure if reading it would bring closure—or ignite something I wasn’t prepared to face.

So I placed it gently back on the desk, beside the scattered evidence of his double-deals and secrets. The envelope looked so small compared to the thick bundles of corruption, and yet it pulled at me harder than any of it.

I leaned back in my chair, dragging a hand down my face, trying to steady the storm inside me.
I clasped my eyes shut before I reached out for the envelope...