Chapter 9 - The Truth on the Screen
The girl looked down at the illuminated screen of the smartphone, her thumb brushing the smooth glass. ""My mom didn't just leave me an old picture,"" she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of a distant generator. ""Before she... before she passed away last month, she made me promise to find you. She said this phone was your old number, and that if anything ever happened to her, you were the only one who could unlock what was hidden inside."" Jax froze, the workshop tools suddenly seeming to weigh a thousand pounds. He walked over slowly, kneeling down in front of the wooden crate so they were at eye level. With hands that had broken countless knuckles and wrenched apart twisted metal, he took the phone from her small, cold fingers. He pressed a specific sequence of buttons—an old passcode only they had known, a combination based on the coordinates of a diner where they had spent their last summer together years ago. The screen flickered, bypassing the lock screen, and opened a hidden folder filled with encrypted audio files and scanned documents. Jax stared at the display, his breath catching in his throat as the darkest secret of his past stared right back at him.
