The Spiteful Bride, Marry to Rival's Son-Chapter 168
MAKE SURE YOU ELIMINATE HER BEFORE THE WEDDING
But after a thorough search, Ethan was satisfied that the room was clean of any surveillance equipment.
His dad’s bedroom was exactly what you would expect from a man like Samuel. Everything was expensive and perfectly organized. The bed was made with military precision, not a single wrinkle in the expensive sheets. The clothes in the closet were arranged by color and type, like something you’d see in a high-end store display.
Ethan started his search systematically, trying to think like his father. Samuel was methodical about everything, so any hidden evidence would be somewhere logical but not obvious.
He went through the dresser drawers first, checking behind and under them for hidden compartments. He examined the closet next, feeling along the walls for safes or secret panels that might be concealed behind the expensive suits.
He searched the bathroom thoroughly, looking behind mirrors and inside cabinets. Then he checked the sitting area and even got down on his hands and knees to look under the massive bed. But he found nothing suspicious anywhere.
His dad was too smart to leave anything incriminating lying around in obvious places. Samuel had been playing this game for years, maybe decades. He knew how to cover his tracks.
Feeling frustrated and running out of time, Ethan was about to give up when his eyes fell on something he had almost missed. There was a metal box sitting on the top shelf of Samuel’s bookcase, pushed far back and almost hidden behind some large leather-bound books.
Ethan pulled over the desk chair and climbed up carefully to reach the box. It was heavier than he expected, and he had to be careful not to drop it as he climbed back down.
Setting the box on Samuel’s desk, Ethan was surprised to find that it wasn’t locked. That seemed careless for someone as paranoid as his father, unless Samuel thought no one would ever find it up there.
Inside the box, Ethan found several files and folders. Most of them looked like business documents with boring titles about contracts and investments. He didn’t bother checking those.
But there were other papers mixed in that looked more personal. Phone records, receipts, and what looked like copies of bank statements. Ethan’s heart started beating faster as he realized what he was looking at.
He quickly pulled out his phone and started taking pictures of everything, making sure to capture every detail. He needed to document all of this evidence, but he also needed to work quickly before his dad came home from the office.
Some of the papers had names on them that Ethan didn’t recognize. Others had dates and amounts of money that seemed random until Ethan started to see a pattern. Large cash withdrawals always seemed to happen right before something bad happened to someone Samuel didn’t like.
There were also photographs in the box. Not family photos, but surveillance pictures of people going about their daily lives. Pictures taken from a distance, like someone had been watching these people without their knowledge.
Ethan’s hands were shaking as he photographed everything. This was proof that his father had been planning and paying for criminal activities for years. But he still needed something that directly connected him to his mother’s murder.
When Ethan finished photographing everything in the box, he carefully placed each file and folder back exactly where he had found it. He put the box back on the shelf in the same position, making sure the books were arranged the same way to hide it.
As he was preparing to leave the room and lock the door behind him, something on his dad’s dresser caught his eye.
Lying there in plain sight, as if Samuel wanted it to be found, was a small piece of jewelry that made Ethan’s blood freeze in his veins.
He walked closer to get a better look, hardly believing what he was seeing.
It was his mom’s bracelet. The delicate silver bracelet he had saved up money to buy her for her birthday three years ago, with her initials "C.M" engraved on the inside.
It was the first expensive gift he had ever been able to afford for her, and she had been so touched by it that she refused to ever take it off. "I want to wear your gift as a reminder of how far we’ve come," she used to say whenever he suggested she put it somewhere safe.
This bracelet should have been with his mother’s personal belongings at the police station or the morgue. All of her jewelry should have been catalogued as evidence or returned to the family.
But here it was, sitting casually on his father’s dresser like a trophy or a reminder.
He remembered his dad had taken it from the police station, then what was it doing here without any of her other belongings?
Then he also remembered the second phone he had seen on the dashboard camera footage. His mother had been using a phone he didn’t recognize in the hours before she died. He needed to find that phone.
He started searching through Samuel’s dresser drawers again, this time looking for the mysterious second phone. He went through the nightstands, checked the bathroom counter, even looked in the pockets of suits hanging in the closet.
Finally, in the last drawer of the dresser, underneath some old business cards, Ethan found it.
The phone was small and cheap, nothing like the expensive device his mother normally used. It looked like one of those disposable phones you could buy at a gas station with cash.
Ethan tried switching it on, but the battery was completely dead. He couldn’t take the phone with him without Samuel noticing it was missing, but maybe he could borrow it long enough to see what was on it.
He decided to risk it. His father wouldn’t be home from work for at least seven hours, which should be enough time to charge the phone, check its contents, and return it before anyone noticed.
He quickly put everything back where he found it and hurried to his own room with the phone hidden in his jacket pocket.
Once safely in his bedroom with the door locked, he sat on his bed and plugged the phone into his charger. After a few minutes, he tried switching it on.
The phone came to life, but it was password protected. Ethan tried several combinations, starting with his mother’s birthday. That didn’t work. He tried his own birthday, then Samuel’s birthday.
When he entered Samuel’s birthday, the phone unlocked immediately.
Ethan stared at the screen for a moment, feeling sick. His mother had used Samuel’s birthday as her password. Even on her secret phone, even when she was apparently planning something behind his back, she had still been thinking about the man who had ultimately killed her.
The betrayal was almost too much to process. She had chosen Samuel over everyone else, including her own son. And Samuel had repaid that loyalty by murdering her.
He quickly navigated to the call log, looking for clues about who his mother had been talking to in her final days or hours.
There was one number that appeared over and over again in the recent calls. The last call to that number had been made on the day she died, at almost exactly the same time Ethan had seen her texting on the dashboard camera footage.
With growing dread, Ethan opened the text message app to see what his mother had been writing in those final hours.
What he found there made him drop the phone in shock.
The last text message his mother had sent was to that same mysterious number. It was a photograph attached to a short message that made Ethan’s world collapse around him.
The photograph was of Elena, taken from a distance as she walked out of a restaurant. Someone had been watching her, following her, documenting her movements.
And the message underneath the photo was written in his mother’s own words:
"That’s her in the picture. Make sure you eliminate her before the wedding tomorrow. I will never live to watch my son bring that woman into this family as his wife."
The phone slipped from Ethan’s numb fingers and clattered to the floor.
