CHAPTER 6: Chapter 7 - The Man Who Hid the Mail

By morning, Michael had a name: Arthur Vale, the family attorney who had served his grandfather for forty years. Arthur lived outside the city in a gated house behind hedges clipped with surgical precision.
Michael went alone.
Arthur greeted him with the faint smile of a man who believed age made him untouchable. "I wondered when this would come back."
Michael placed copies of Evelyn's letters on the desk. "You intercepted them."
"Your grandfather instructed me to protect you."
"From my mother?"
"From instability. From scandal. From poverty."
The room seemed to cool. "You let a woman scrub hotel floors while her son believed she abandoned him."
Arthur leaned back. "You became Michael Reed because we kept sentiment away from you."
Michael saw the architecture of his life: discipline, loneliness, grief under expensive furniture.
"No," he said quietly. "I became Michael Reed in spite of you."
Arthur's smile faded.
Michael gathered the letters. "My legal team will contact you. So will the ethics board. If you destroyed any document connected to my mother, spend the afternoon remembering where the ashes are."
He left without slamming the door.
Outside, he found a message from Evelyn: You don't have to fight old battles for me.
He replied: I am not fighting the past. I am bringing you home from it.