Chapter 4 - THE LEDGER IN THE FLOORBOARDS
Nico’s grip on my wrist didn't feel like a threat; it felt like an anchor in a storm I was only beginning to understand. I didn't pull away. Instead, I carefully extracted my hand, keeping my expression neutral, and placed the specimen bag inside the locked medical box on the counter.
“If I wanted to be safe, Mr. Alfieri, I would have stayed in Cicero folding laundry for minimum wage,” I said quietly. “You’re the one drinking the tea. If you want to survive the next seventeen days before your wedding, you need to start trusting someone who isn't on your family payroll.”
He stared at me for a long, silent moment, the tension in his shoulders slowly easing. Then, a slow, grim smile touched the corner of his mouth.
“You really don't know when to back down, do you?”
“It’s in my job description.”
“Come with me,” he said, spinning his wheelchair around with a sharp turn of his wrists.
“Where?”
“To my father’s old study. The room nobody enters because Camille redecorated the rest of the house into a modern art museum and forgot that one locked door existed.”
I followed him down the long, shadowed corridor past the sweeping staircase where the crystal chandelier cast fractured prisms across the wall. The Alfieri estate at three in the morning was a monument to wealth and quiet terror. Every floorboard seemed to creak under the weight of decades of secrets, illegal shipping manifests, and family blood money.
Nico wheeled himself to the very end of the west wing, inserted a heavy brass key into a tarnished lock that hadn’t been turned in years, and pushed the heavy oak door open.
The room smelled of old leather, pipe tobacco, and dust that had settled before the digital age. A massive mahogany desk dominated the center of the room, flanked by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
Nico rolled over to a Persian rug near the fireplace, reached down, and hooked his fingers beneath the edge of the heavy wool.
“Help me lift this corner,” he ordered.
I crossed the room, grabbed the heavy fabric, and pulled back the rug. Beneath it was a square brass floor safe set directly into the concrete foundation.
“My father died six months before my car accident,” Nico said, his voice dropping low as he pulled a small leather-bound notebook from his jacket pocket—a notebook he must have kept hidden all evening. “The police called the crash a brake failure on the mountain road. My physical therapist called the lingering paralysis permanent nerve damage. But my father’s old accountant died of a heart attack in his garage three days after the funeral.”
He punched a six-digit combination into the brass safe. The heavy door swung open with a pneumatic hiss.
Inside sat no money, no gold, and no family jewels.
Instead, there was a stack of thick, black leather ledgers with yellowed pages—and right on top, a certified bank transfer slip dated four days before my employment interview, showing a fifty-thousand-dollar wire transfer from Ashcroft Holdings to Dr. Harrison Vance—Nico’s primary neurologist.
I picked up the bank slip, my hands going cold.
“Dr. Vance is Camille’s uncle,” I whispered, looking up at Nico in horror. “He isn't just managing your recovery. He’s the one prescribing the exact chemical imbalance that keeps you in this chair.”
May you like
Nico’s eyes were pitch-black in the dim light of the study. He reached into the safe and pulled out a heavy, pearl-handled revolver, laying it quietly across his knees.
“And tomorrow morning,” Nico said softly, cocking the hammer with a sharp, metallic click that echoed off the leather books, “Camille’s father is coming over for breakfast to finalize the wedding contracts.”
