Chapter 7 - The Ledger Under the Floorboards
Three weeks passed before Roman contacted me.
He did not call.
He sent a letter through my attorney.
Inside was a copy of a ledger.
The first page carried my father's initials.
The final page carried Vale's signature.
Between them were names and dates.
Payments from the shipping company.
Transfers to a private account.
And a note about a warehouse fire.
I took it to Detective Brooks.
She studied the numbers silently.
"This is useful," she said.
"Enough to arrest Vale?"
"Enough to keep digging."
The investigation widened.
Auditors traced the transfers.
Former employees began talking.
One had kept copies of invoices.
Another remembered seeing Dad argue with Vale.
A third identified the warehouse manager.
The evidence was no longer one woman's word.
It was a trail.
And it led somewhere Vale had never expected.
The estate's old maintenance office.
Finn remembered a sealed floor panel.
Police obtained permission to search it.
Under the boards sat a metal case.
Inside were original contracts.
Unaltered shipping records.
And a photograph of the burned warehouse.
Dad had hidden the evidence in plain sight.
I stared at his handwriting.
My hands trembled.
He hadn't abandoned me to debt.
He had been trying to protect me.
May you like
I pressed the papers against my chest.
For once, I cried without shame.
