“Are you saying we are in danger right now?” I asked, my voice trembling as I looked instinctively toward the hotel room window overlooking the quiet courtyard.
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Richard nodded grimly, standing up and locking the deadbolt on the door before drawing the heavy curtains completely shut. “That is why I brought you here, away from your apartment where anyone could easily track your daily routine.”
He handed me a small, encrypted flash drive containing digital backups of all the legal files, bank records, and correspondence related to the trust. “If anything happens to me, you need to take this drive straight to the federal authorities and hand it over to a trusted attorney immediately.”
I clutched the small drive in my hand, realizing that my peaceful, ordinary life had changed forever in a single evening. But looking at my uncle, I no longer felt fear, only a united resolve to face whatever threats lay ahead together.My uncle once asked me, ‘Are you a virgin?’ when I was already 27 years old. From that moment, I started to be afraid of him. And a few days later, when he took me to a hotel outside the city, he leaned close to my ear by the pool and whispered, ‘After the pool, come up to my room…’”
