Chapter 5 - The Dead Wife’s Ledger
Z
The police arrived twenty minutes later, but by the time the flashing red and blue lights illuminated the high limestone gates of the estate, the storm had already shifted.
Camille Vance—or Camille Dupont, as her fake ID claimed—was led out of the house in handcuffs, her green coat ruined, her red shoes dragging along the cobblestones as she continued to hum a low, frantic tune under her breath. She didn't look back at the house. She didn't look at Adrian.
Marco stood near the ambulance, a heavy bandage wrapped around his shoulder where a bullet had passed clean through the meat of his trapezius. He looked furious, not at the pain, but at himself for letting a woman bypass the gate.
“She had the security codes,” Marco grunted to Adrian as the paramedics checked his wound. “She didn't hack the system, boss. Someone gave her the morning override key.”
I stood near the bottom of the grand staircase, holding Leo against my hip. The boy had finally fallen asleep from sheer emotional exhaustion, his small face buried in the crook of my neck, his thumb caught tightly between his lips. My arms were aching, my whole body was shaking with an adrenaline crash that left me feeling hollowed out, but I refused to put him down.
Adrian walked over to us.
He looked terrible. The tailored suit was ruined, stained with rainwater, his own blood, and his sister-in-law’s perfume. A white bandage was taped over his cheekbone where glass had cut him. But as he stopped in front of me, his eyes weren't on his own injuries. They were on me.
He reached out, his long fingers gently touching the side of my neck, checking my pulse as if he needed physical proof that I was still breathing.
“Are you hurt?” he asked softly.
“I’m fine,” I whispered, staring up at him. “Leo is fine.”
Adrian let out a shuddering breath, his hand moving from my neck to lay gently on top of Leo’s back. For a long second, we just stood there, linked by the body of his sleeping child, the frantic chaos of the crime scene swirling around us like a distant storm.
“She lied,” I said quietly. “Camille. She said she came for Leo, but she was a distraction.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “I know.”
He turned, gesturing toward the open door of his study.
I followed him inside. The room was a disaster. The heavy glass desk had been cleared, books torn from the shelves, and behind the oil painting of Adrian’s father, a hidden wall safe hung wide open, its thick steel door drilled through with precise, professional clean-cuts.
“What did they take?” I asked, stepping over a pile of scattered papers.
“Not money,” Adrian said, walking over to the open safe. He reached inside, pulling out an empty velvet-lined tray. “Three years ago, before Elena died, she was managing a private charitable trust funded by Moretti Development. A fifty-million-dollar fund intended for city hospital renovations.”
I frowned. “Intended for?”
“The money vanished six months before she passed away,” Adrian said, his voice dropping into a dark, terrifying register. “The public thought it was poor investment management. The police investigated and found nothing. But Elena kept a second set of books. The real ledgers. Showing every wire transfer, every offshore shell company, every bribe paid to city officials.”
I gasped, the realization hitting me like a physical punch. “She wasn't sick, was she?”
Adrian turned to look at me, his eyes burning with a terrible, agonized light.
“Elena had an underlying heart condition,” he whispered, each word sounding as if it were being torn from his throat. “She was frail. But three days before she died, she told me she was going to the state prosecutor. She was going to name the person who stole the money.”
“And then she died of ‘complications,’” I finished softly.
“I was blinded by grief,” Adrian said, slamming his fist against the open metal door of the safe with enough force to ring through the room. “I believed the doctors! I thought her heart just gave out! But Camille... Camille knew. She knew someone killed her sister.”
“Julian,” I whispered, remembering the blond man’s arrogant, cruel smile in this very room two hours ago. “Julian was the vice president. He would have had access to the trust.”
“Julian didn't act alone,” Adrian said, stepping closer to me, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my breath catch in my throat. “Julian is a coward. He doesn't have the stomach for murder or armed break-ins. He’s working for someone higher up. Someone on my board. Someone who needed those ledgers destroyed before the audit next week.”
“Why bring Camille into it?”
“Because Camille was unstable, broke, and obsessed with revenge,” Adrian said bitter. “They used her love for her dead sister to turn her into a weapon. They told her I killed Elena. They gave her the security codes and told her Leo was being hidden from her. They set her up to take the fall for the break-in while their real thief stole the evidence out of my safe.”
I looked at the empty safe, then down at the sleeping boy in my arms.
“They’re going to kill you, Adrian,” I said, the truth hanging in the heavy air between us like smoke. “If those ledgers are gone, there’s nothing stopping them from finishing what they started three years ago.”
Adrian looked at me, his hand coming up to gently cup my face. His thumb brushed over my cheekbone, warm, rough, and trembling slightly.
“They can try,” Adrian whispered, his face inches from mine. “But they made one mistake.”
“What’s that?”
“They brought you into my life,” he said softly, his dark eyes blazing with a fierce, possessive flame. “And now I have something to fight for besides revenge.”
Before I could process the terrifying, beautiful weight of his words, Marco stepped into the room, holding a encrypted satellite phone.
“Boss,” Marco said, his face pale. “We tapped Julian’s cell like you ordered. He just made a call to a burner number in Geneva.”
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Adrian didn't drop his hand from my cheek. “And?”
“He’s meeting the buyer in two hours,” Marco said. “At the old grain silos on the South Branch.”
