Chapter 3 - The Ledger Nobody Was Supposed to FindMargaret stared at the brass key as though it had betrayed her.
“I checked that box three months ago.”
Adrien remained standing near the door.
“The bank confirms access yesterday at 11:43 a.m.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“We know.”
Rebecca looked at Gabriel.
“Then someone used her identity.”
“Or someone inside the bank bypassed it,” Gabriel said.
Margaret pressed one hand against her forehead.
“The ledger was the only original copy.”
Rebecca’s stomach sank.
Gabriel, however, did not react like a man who had just lost his only evidence.
He watched Margaret carefully.
“What else was in the box?”
She looked up.
“Nothing important.”
Gabriel’s expression changed slightly.
Rebecca noticed.
“You don’t believe her.”
Margaret sighed.
“Your father was exactly this irritating.”
Gabriel almost smiled.
“What else was inside?”
The older woman looked at Rebecca.
“A letter.”
“For who?”
“Gabriel.”
Silence settled over the library.
Gabriel stared at her.
“My father wrote me a letter?”
Margaret nodded.
“Three days before he died.”
For the first time since Rebecca had met him, Gabriel Moretti looked genuinely shaken.
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because he told me not to.”
“What?”
“He said I was to give it to you only if you came looking for St. Catherine yourself.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It did to him.”
Margaret’s voice softened.
“He didn’t know who inside the family he could trust.”
Gabriel looked away.
Rebecca understood what that meant.
Vittorio had loved his son.
But he had also feared that someone might manipulate Gabriel after his death.
If Gabriel simply inherited suspicion from another person, he might never know whether it was true.
Vittorio had wanted his son to discover the trail himself.
And eleven years later, the trail had reached a locked cellar and a frightened maid with a cracked phone.
Rebecca suddenly remembered something.
“My photographs.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“What about them?”
“I photographed more than invoices.”
Adrien moved closer.
“What else?”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
Daniel had grabbed her phone.
He had scrolled through everything while shouting.
He had forced her to delete each photograph.
Invoices.
Transfer sheets.
Contractor lists.
Then—
“A black notebook.”
Margaret stared.
“What?”
“There was a notebook in Daniel’s desk.”
“What did it look like?”
“Black leather. Small. Old.”
Margaret stood so quickly that her chair scraped against the floor.
“Did it have a gold cross stamped near the bottom?”
Rebecca felt chills move over her arms.
“Yes.”
Margaret grabbed the edge of the table.
“That was the ledger.”
Gabriel turned sharply.
“You said it was in the bank.”
“It was.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“That’s impossible.”
Margaret looked frightened now.
“Unless someone replaced it.”
The implications spread through the room.
At some point, someone had taken Vittorio’s original ledger from Margaret’s safe-deposit box.
Daniel had possessed it.
Which meant Daniel had not merely been involved in new fraud.
He had been connected directly to evidence from eleven years earlier.
Adrien’s phone rang again.
This time, his expression changed before he answered.
He listened.
Then looked at Rebecca.
“We got the phone.”
Her damaged phone had been released after forensic imaging by police.
Gabriel and Rebecca followed Adrien into the estate’s security room.
Technicians had already begun extracting cloud data.
The touchscreen had barely worked, but automatic synchronization had saved more than Daniel realized.
One by one, Rebecca’s photographs appeared on a monitor.
False invoices.
Bank transfers.
Repair contracts.
Her forged signature.
Then the black notebook.
Margaret made a sound behind her.
“That’s it.”
Gabriel moved closer.
Adrien enlarged the image.
Several entries were visible.
Dates.
Amounts.
Initials.
Company names.
And one line Rebecca had not noticed when she took the picture.
HFS — 18,000 — E.M. AUTHORIZATION
Gabriel stared.
“Hawthorne Fleet Services.”
Margaret nodded.
Adrien zoomed in.
The date was October 16.
Two days before Vittorio Moretti died.
Gabriel’s face emptied of emotion.
Rebecca knew enough about him by then to understand that this was when he was most dangerous.
Not when he raised his voice.
When he became quiet.
“What does E.M. mean?” she asked.
Nobody answered.
They all knew.
Enzo Moretti.
Gabriel walked out of the room.
Rebecca followed.
He crossed the hall, opened the back door, and stepped into the rain.
“Gabriel.”
He continued walking.
She followed him beneath the covered terrace.
“You can’t go after him.”
He turned.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“You have no idea what I’m going to do.”
“I know exactly what you want to do.”
His eyes darkened.
“My father died alone inside a car at the bottom of an embankment.”
“And if Enzo caused it, you want revenge.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Rebecca stepped closer.
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
“My fiancé hit me and locked me underground because I found paperwork.”
Gabriel’s face tightened.
“You think I haven’t imagined hurting him?”
“Rebecca—”
“I imagined it while I was in the hospital.”
She hated admitting it.
But it was true.
“I imagined Daniel being afraid the way I was afraid.”
Gabriel watched her.
“And did it help?”
“No.”
Rain fell beyond the terrace.
Rebecca lowered her voice.
“What helped was telling the police exactly what happened.”
Gabriel looked toward the lake.
“I’m not very good at trusting police.”
“Then trust the evidence.”
He remained silent.
She continued.
“Your father kept that ledger because he wanted the truth discovered.”
“You don’t know what my father wanted.”
“No.”
Rebecca pointed toward the security room.
“But I know he spent years documenting numbers instead of putting a bullet in his brother.”
That landed.
Gabriel looked at her.
Rebecca held his gaze.
“If you become the reason the case falls apart, Enzo wins twice.”
A long silence followed.
Then Gabriel asked, “Are you always this stubborn?”
“My aunt raised me.”
From the doorway behind them, Margaret called, “And she turned out beautifully.”
Rebecca almost laughed.
Gabriel actually did.
It was brief and quiet.
But something between them shifted.
Not romance.
Not yet.
Respect.
By afternoon, the first major breakthrough arrived.
Hawthorne Fleet Services had closed nine years earlier.
Adrien located its former owner, a seventy-six-year-old mechanic named Samuel Crane.
Crane remembered Vittorio Moretti’s car.
Not because of Vittorio.
Because the request had been unusual.
Someone had brought the vehicle in claiming the brake system needed replacement.
The car did not.
Crane had refused to perform unnecessary work.
The customer took the vehicle elsewhere.
“Who brought it in?” Gabriel asked during the recorded interview.
Crane stared at an old photograph Adrien had placed in front of him.
Daniel Mercer.
Much younger.
But unmistakable.
Rebecca felt sick.
Daniel had been twenty-eight then.
He had already been working for Enzo.
Already moving through the same network.
Gabriel stared at the photograph.
“He knew.”
Rebecca whispered, “About your father.”
“Maybe.”
Gabriel was unwilling to claim more than the evidence proved.
Rebecca respected that.
Daniel had been dangerous enough without turning him into something he had not done.
But then Adrien entered with another document.
The bank had recovered surveillance footage from the person who accessed Margaret’s safe-deposit box.
Rebecca expected a stranger.
Instead, the screen showed Daniel Mercer.
The footage was six months old.
Not yesterday.
The bank’s digital system had incorrectly displayed the most recent administrative update as the access date.
Daniel had opened the box six months earlier.
Rebecca stared at the image.
Six months.
Around the same time he had suddenly insisted they accelerate wedding plans.
Around the same time he had started asking questions about Margaret’s finances.
Her apartment.
Her documents.
Her will.
Rebecca felt nauseated.
“He wasn’t asking because we were getting married.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“No.”
“He was looking for the ledger.”
“Yes.”
Rebecca stood.
Seven years of memories began rearranging themselves inside her mind.
Daniel bringing Margaret groceries.
Daniel fixing the kitchen faucet.
Daniel offering to organize her old documents.
Daniel asking whether Margaret still used a bank box because “seniors shouldn’t keep valuables outside the house.”
Every act that had once looked like kindness now carried another possible meaning.
Rebecca whispered, “Was any of it real?”
Gabriel looked at her.
She hated that he heard the question.
Hated that she cared.
Hated that despite the bruise he had left on her face and the terror he had caused, part of her still grieved the man she believed Daniel had been.
Gabriel did not insult her for that grief.
He simply said, “Some people can care about you and still choose themselves when it matters.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“That’s worse.”
“I know.”
That night, investigators requested another interview with Daniel Mercer.
He refused.
Until he learned the black ledger had been photographed.
Then everything changed.
At 9:12 p.m., Gabriel received a call from Daniel’s attorney.
Daniel wanted to speak.
He had one condition.
Rebecca must be present.
Gabriel immediately said no.
Rebecca, standing across the library, said yes.
Gabriel covered the phone.
“No.”
“You don’t decide.”
“He assaulted you.”
“And I still get to decide.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“He’s trying to manipulate you.”
“Probably.”
“Then why would you go?”
Rebecca looked toward Vittorio’s photograph.
“Because he knows who ordered him to take the ledger.”
Gabriel did not move.
Rebecca continued.
“And I think he knows what happened to your father.”
Daniel sat behind reinforced glass the next morning.
The bruise near Rebecca’s mouth had faded yellow.
His face looked almost untouched.
For seven years, she had known every expression he possessed.
The smile he used when apologizing.
The lowered eyes he used when pretending regret.
The slight tilt of his head when preparing to lie.
Today, she saw all three.
“Becca.”
She felt nothing when he said the nickname.
That surprised her.
Daniel leaned toward the glass.
“I’m sorry.”
Rebecca picked up the telephone.
“You locked me in a cellar.”
“I panicked.”
“You hit me.”
“I know.”
“You threatened my aunt.”
His face changed.
“I didn’t.”
“Someone did.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Then who?”
Daniel looked through the glass toward Gabriel.
Gabriel stood behind Rebecca with Adrien several feet away.
Daniel laughed bitterly.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
Gabriel said nothing.
Daniel looked back at Rebecca.
“I took the ledger.”
“Why?”
“I was told to.”
“By Enzo?”
Daniel’s eyes flickered.
Rebecca saw the answer.
Gabriel saw it too.
Daniel leaned closer.
“You think Enzo Moretti is afraid of some old bookkeeping records?”
“He was afraid enough to steal them.”
Daniel smiled without humor.
“No.”
He looked directly at Gabriel.
“He was afraid of what your father recorded on the night before he died.”
Gabriel stepped forward.
“What recording?”
Daniel leaned back.
For the first time, fear appeared on his face.
“A conversation.”
“With who?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Enzo.”
The room became silent.
Daniel continued.
“Your father knew he was in danger.”
Gabriel’s voice became deadly calm.
“Where is the recording?”
May you like
Daniel looked at Rebecca.
“That’s why they’re going to kill me.”
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