Chapter 5: The Name On The Evidence
That night, our house felt different.
Not like a home.
Like a place where a secret was hiding.
Dad locked the doors twice.
Mom kept asking if we were okay.
Grandma prayed quietly in the living room.
And Claire sat across from me at the kitchen table.
For once, we weren’t enemies.
We were both trying to figure out who wanted us destroyed.
“I need to tell you something,” Claire said.
I looked up.
“What?””
She took a deep breath.
“Before your scholarship letter came, someone talked to me.””
“Who?””
“I don’t know.””
I frowned.
“That doesn’t make sense.””
“I know.””
She rubbed her hands together nervously.
“They knew everything about us.””
“What do you mean?””
“They knew you were getting the scholarship. They knew I was upset. They told me you thought you were better than me.””
My stomach tightened.
“What did they say?””
Claire looked ashamed.
“They said you were secretly laughing at me.””
I stared at her.
“I never said that.””
“I know now.””
Her voice broke.
“But at the time, I was angry.””
I believed her.
Not because she deserved forgiveness.
But because I finally understood.
Someone had found her weakest moment.
And used it.
Dad walked into the kitchen holding a folder.
“I found something.””
We both looked up.
He placed it on the table.
“The messages came from a prepaid phone. But I traced the university complaint.””
My heart started racing.
“And?””
Dad looked at Claire.
“The person who submitted it had access to one of your old school accounts.””
Claire went pale.
“What account?””
“The student portal.””
She shook her head.
“No one knows my password.””
Dad opened the folder.
“Someone did.””
Inside was a printed record.
A login history.
One name appeared.
A name none of us expected.
My mother covered her mouth when she saw it.
Because the person who accessed Claire’s account wasn’t a stranger.
It wasn’t a hacker.
It was someone inside our family.
Dad stared at the document.
Then he whispered:
“Your cousin, Marcus.””
I felt the air leave my lungs.
Marcus.
The cousin who had always acted like my biggest supporter.
The cousin who congratulated me when I got the scholarship.
The cousin who hugged Claire after she cried about falling behind.
“No,” Claire whispered.
Dad looked at her.
“Claire, did Marcus ever talk to you about Emma’s scholarship?””
Her face changed.
Slowly.
Like she was remembering something she had tried to forget.
“He…”
She stopped.
“What?””
Claire looked terrified.
“He told me something strange.””
“What did he say?”” Dad asked.
She swallowed.
“He said…”
Her voice became barely audible.
“He said if Emma disappeared from the competition, everything would finally be fair.””
Nobody moved.
The kitchen went silent.
Because suddenly, the person we thought was helping us…
had been the one pulling every string.
Then my phone lit up.
Another unknown message.
I looked down.
One sentence appeared.
*You’re getting closer. Maybe you should ask your father what Marcus knows about the night your scholarship application was approved.*
I stared at the screen.
Because there was something hidden in that message.
Something impossible.
A detail only someone inside the family could know.
May you like
And when I looked up at my father’s face…
I realized he was hiding something too.
