Chapter 3
The Ledger Behind the False Wall
I slipped back inside through the side service hallway.
The staff avoided my eyes.
They knew the tension in this house better than anyone.
I climbed the grand staircase in silence.
My footsteps made no sound on the thick Persian runner.
The second-floor landing was quiet.
Only the grandfather clock ticked in the shadows.
I pushed open the heavy oak door to Graham’s private study.
The room smelled of old leather and expensive tobacco.
I locked the door behind me with a soft click.
My fingers trembled slightly as I reached for the oil painting.
It was a seascape of Charleston Harbor by a local artist.
Graham’s grandfather had supposedly owned it.
I slid the frame to the left.
The heavy wall safe was exposed in the wood paneling.
A ten-digit biometric keypad glowed with a faint blue light.
Graham’s fingerprint.
Graham’s voiceprint.
Or the manual override code I had memorized five years ago.
I punched in the six-digit sequence.
The green light blinked.
The heavy steel door swung open with a pneumatic hiss.
I reached inside the lower compartment.
My fingers brushed against the navy gift box I had placed there earlier.
Beneath it rested something heavier.
A black leather binder.
Unmarked.
Bound with a heavy elastic band.
I pulled it out and set it on the mahogany desk.
I switched on the brass banker’s lamp.
The yellow glow cut through the dim room.
I snapped the elastic band.
Page after page of financial records stared back at me.
Offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands.
Shell companies registered under my maiden name without my consent.
Bribes paid to port authorities and city council members.
And right there, underlined in red ink:
The acquisition of my father’s shipping company.
The company Graham claimed went bankrupt legally.
The documents proved otherwise.
Graham had engineered the hostile takeover.
He had manufactured the debt.
He had driven my father to a fatal stroke.
And then he married the dead man’s daughter to seal the title.
The room spun around me.
The air turned thick and suffocating.
My hands grew ice-cold.
Ten years.
A decade of sleeping beside the man who murdered my family’s legacy.
The navy gift box sat a few inches away.
Inside was his father’s restored watch.
Every moment still begins with us.
I let out a harsh, bitter laugh.
Every moment began with a lie.
I pulled my phone from my pocket.
I opened the camera app.
I began photographing every single page of the ledger.
Flash off.
High resolution.
Document by document.
Halfway through the second section, the study door jiggled.
A heavy hand tested the knob.
“Eleanor?” Graham’s voice called from the hallway.
May you like
“Are you in there?”
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
