Chapter 12 - THE DEAD MAN'S LEDGER
Z
The house felt like a powder keg. I sent Lily to stay with Maya’s sister, a pediatrician who lived in a gated community with armed guards forty miles away. I told Lily it was a fun sleepover. Kissing her goodbye felt like tearing off a limb, but I needed her out of the blast radius.
Because I was going to tear my own house apart.
If Daniel had hidden Evelyn’s cartel ledgers, they had to be here. He wouldn't have trusted a safety deposit box, and he knew Evelyn had keys to his office. He had hidden them in plain sight, waiting for the FBI, but he ran out of time.
I started in the attic. I ripped up floorboards. I checked inside the insulation. Nothing.
I moved to the basement. I emptied every box of holiday decorations, every old file cabinet. I smashed open the drywall where it sounded hollow. My hands were bruised and bleeding, my breathing ragged.
By 3:00 AM on Friday, the house was a disaster zone. I sat on the living room floor, surrounded by piles of books, overturned furniture, and slashed cushions. I felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up in my throat. I had destroyed my own sanctuary, doing the hitman's job for him.
Daniel’s architectural blueprints.
I scrambled over the debris to the drafting table in the corner of his old home office. I had kept it exactly as he left it. I pulled out the massive tubes of blueprints. I unrolled them one by one. Houses, commercial buildings, park renovations. Nothing but lines and measurements.
I slumped against the desk in defeat. I picked up the stuffed fox Lily had left on the chair. The same fox that had been sitting in my passenger seat the day the nightmare began.
I squeezed it, burying my face in the soft fabric, smelling the faint scent of Lily’s strawberry shampoo.
“Grandma said Daddy went away because he didn't listen.”
Lily’s voice echoed in my memory. I squeezed the fox tighter.
Wait.
The torso of the fox felt oddly stiff. Not the soft squish of cotton stuffing, but something rigid. A small, flat rectangle.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a paring knife, and carefully slit the seam along the fox’s back.
I reached inside the fluff. My fingers brushed against hard plastic.
I pulled out a small, encrypted black hard drive.
Daniel hadn't hidden paper ledgers. He had copied Evelyn’s digital files. And he had sewn them into the one object he knew I would protect with my life, the one object Evelyn would never think to touch: his daughter’s favorite toy.
I plugged the drive into my laptop. A password prompt appeared.
I didn't even have to think. I typed in our wedding anniversary and Lily’s birthdate.
Access Granted.
Thousands of files cascaded across the screen. Offshore accounts. Wire transfers. Names of politicians, judges, and corporate executives. It was a roadmap of a multi-million dollar money-laundering syndicate. Evelyn had been a minor cog, but this drive contained the entire machine.
Daniel had died for this.
Suddenly, the security system chime on my phone went off.
Motion detected at the back patio.
May you like
I froze. I glanced at the camera feed. My security detail was supposed to be out front. But the feed showed two men in black tactical gear slipping silently through my backyard gate. One of them held a suppressed pistol.
Driver88 had grown tired of waiting.
