Chapter 5 - THE BURNING LEDGER
We ran until my lungs felt like they were going to burst.
We wove through narrow side streets, darting behind parked cars every time headlights swept past us. My graduation gown was heavy and soaked with alley water, so I tore it off and threw it into a trash can, continuing in just the cheap twenty-eight-dollar clearance dress Lily had picked out for me.
“We need a car,” my mother wheezed as we collapsed near a dimly lit bus stop. She was pale, clutching her chest. “Vance will have the police looking for us. He has the entire precinct in his pocket.”
“We can’t go to the police yet,” I agreed, pulling Lily onto my lap to keep her warm. “Not without the ledger. We need to get to Dad’s house.”
“My car is parked three blocks from here,” my mother gasped, digging into her purse and tossing me her keys. “Go. I’ll slow you down.”
“I’m not leaving you on the street, Mom,” I said firmly. Despite everything—despite her cruelty, her complicity, her lies—she was still Lily’s grandmother. And tonight, she had hit a man with a microphone stand to save us.
We made it to her sedan, piled in, and I drove like a ghost through the city, taking backroads until we reached the quiet, affluent suburb where my parents lived—a lifestyle completely funded by my exhausted, sleepless labor.
But as we turned onto their street, my heart plummeted into my stomach.
A thick column of black smoke was billowing into the night sky.
“No,” my mother whispered, pressing her hands against the window.
My father’s detached two-car garage was entirely engulfed in flames.
The fire was roaring, orange tongues licking the roof shingles, fueled by the paints and solvents stored inside. Fire trucks hadn't arrived yet. Whoever set the blaze had just done it.
I slammed the car into park halfway down the street.
“The toolbox is in there!” I yelled.
“Emily, stop! You’ll die!” my mother screamed as I threw the car door open.
I didn't care. That ledger was the only thing that could clear my husband’s name, the only thing that could put Vance behind bars, and the only way I could finally free myself and my daughter from this nightmare.
I sprinted across the manicured lawn. The heat hitting my face was absolute agony, like opening a massive oven door.
I grabbed the heavy garden hose near the flowerbed, turned the spigot on full blast, and soaked myself from head to toe in freezing water. Taking a deep breath, I pulled my wet dress over my mouth and kicked the garage side-door open.
The smoke was blinding. I dropped to my knees, crawling beneath the thickest layer of toxic black clouds.
“David’s workbench,” I coughed, my eyes burning violently. “Back left corner.”
I crawled blindly over shattered glass and burning debris. Through the smoke, I saw the heavy red steel shape of David’s old toolbox sitting on the bottom shelf. The metal was already blistering from the heat.
I reached up and grabbed the handle. It seared my palm, but adrenaline masked the pain. I dragged it off the shelf. It hit the concrete floor with a heavy thud.
Suddenly, a burning roof beam groaned and snapped above me.
Before I could react, someone grabbed me by the back of my dress and hauled me violently backward. The beam crashed down exactly where I had been kneeling, sending sparks flying into the air.
I looked up, coughing violently.
It was my father.
His face was streaked with soot, his suit jacket ruined. He must have fled the hotel and driven straight here. He grabbed the heavy red toolbox by the handle, ignoring the burning metal, and dragged it—and me—out the side door just as the sirens began wailing in the distance.
We collapsed on the wet grass of the backyard, gasping for oxygen.
“You idiot,” my father coughed, tears streaming down his soot-stained face. “You could have died.”
“You set the fire!” I screamed at him, shoving his shoulder. “Vance called you, didn't he? He told you about the ledger!”
“I didn't set the fire, Emily!” he yelled back, his voice breaking. He pulled out his phone and threw it onto the grass between us.
The screen was lit up with a text message from an unknown number: The garage was a warning, Robert. Give me the ledger, or your daughter’s house is next.
My father was sobbing now, curled on the grass like a broken child. “Vance’s men got here before me. I just wanted to get it out before it burned.”
I ignored him, turning my attention to the smoking red toolbox. The lock on the bottom drawer was completely rusted and warped from the heat. I grabbed a heavy rock from my mother’s garden border and smashed it against the lock again and again until the metal snapped.
I pulled the drawer open.
Inside, wrapped tightly in fireproof welding blankets, was a thick, black leather-bound ledger.
I opened it. It was full of David’s meticulous handwriting. Dates. Bank routing numbers. Bribes from Vance. Shell companies my father used to funnel the money. It was a complete roadmap of corruption.
But tucked into the back flap of the ledger was something else.
It was David’s old leather wallet.
My hands shook as I opened the worn leather. Inside was David’s driver’s license, a faded picture of me holding newborn Lily, and a folded piece of crisp, official paper.
I unfolded it.
It was a life insurance policy receipt.
Policy Amount: $2,000,000. Date of Issue: May 11th. (Three days before he died.) Beneficiary: Robert Carter Construction.
I stared at the paper, the numbers blurring. Two million dollars.
“Dad,” I whispered, turning to my father, who was still coughing on the grass. “Why did David take out a two million dollar life insurance policy naming your company as the beneficiary three days before he was killed?”
My mother, who had run into the backyard with Lily, gasped. “Robert… did you forge this too? Did you know he was going to die?”
My father looked at the paper. The color completely drained from his face.
May you like
He looked at me, his eyes filled with a grief so profound it seemed to age him ten years in a single second.
“I didn't forge it, Emily,” my father whispered, choking on his own tears. “David did. He knew they were going to kill him. And he made a deal with the devil to save you.”
