“You knew my grandfather?” I asked.

“I did.” He stepped fully into the room. “My name is Calvin Rhodes. Everett, Charles Holloway, and I were business partners forty years ago.”

He walked to the edge of my bed, reached into his coat, and pulled out a worn leather journal, its edges frayed. He set it gently on the mattress beside my hand.

“Your grandfather knew this day might come, Tessa,” Calvin said. “Grant’s mother, Judith, has spent her whole life cultivating a venomous lie. She convinced Grant that Everett stole their family’s fortune.

She raised him for one purpose: to infiltrate your life and take back what she believed was theirs.”

I stared at the journal. “What is this?”