Chapter 4 - THE LEDGER
The gun wasn’t pointed directly at my chest, but Marcus held it with a casual familiarity that terrified me.
“Put the weapon down, Marcus,” I said, keeping my voice dangerously level. My eyes flicked to the tire iron on the floor, then back to his face.
“I can’t do that, Caleb,” he sighed, sounding genuinely exhausted. He tossed Maya’s silver locket onto the cushion of the rocking chair. “Evelyn made a mess. As usual. I’m just here to clean it up before the police get a warrant.”
“You’re the one who held Maya down in the shed,” I said, the realization settling like a stone in my gut. “You helped my mother torture my pregnant wife.”
Marcus flinched. Just a fraction, but I saw it.
“Torture is a strong word,” he muttered, glancing at the wall of stalking photos. “It was supposed to be a persuasion tactic. Maya was supposed to break. Sign the papers, hand over the rights, and leave quietly.”
“What papers?” I demanded.
Marcus let out a dry, humorless laugh. “You really don’t know, do you? Your mother has spent thirty years curating the perfect family image. You honestly thought she’d let a middle-class interior designer with bad credit raise her only grandson?”
“Maya is my wife. This is our child.”
“Evelyn disagrees.” Marcus gestured to the nursery around us. “She built this. She was going to keep the child here until the adoption went through.”
“Adoption?” My head spun. “You can’t just adopt a stolen baby.”
“You can when the mother is declared legally incompetent,” Marcus said softly. “Which is exactly what that forged suicide note was for. Evelyn was going to have Maya committed. Or worse. And with Maya out of the picture, Evelyn would step in as the primary guardian. Not you, Caleb. You travel too much. You’re unfit.”
I stared at him, the sheer scale of the insanity threatening to pull me under. My mother wasn’t just controlling. She was a monster orchestrating a hostile takeover of my family.
“Why the locket?” I asked, pointing to the chair. “Why take that from her?”
Marcus looked down at the silver necklace. He swallowed hard. “Because Evelyn needed the key.”
“What key?”
Marcus slowly lowered the gun, just an inch. “Maya never told you what was inside her father’s locket, did she?”
I frowned. “It’s a picture of her parents.”
“No,” Marcus said. He walked over to the rocking chair, picked up the locket, and tossed it to me.
I caught it. My thumb pressed the small clasp on the side.
The locket popped open.
There was no picture inside.
Folded neatly into the tiny oval space was a micro-SD card.
“Maya’s father was an accountant, Caleb,” Marcus said quietly. “Before he died, he audited Evelyn’s charitable foundation. He found the rot. Millions of dollars siphoned off into offshore accounts. When Evelyn found out he knew, she destroyed him. Ruined his reputation. Drove him to a heart attack.”
My chest seized. Maya had always told me her father died of stress from a failed business. She never said my mother was the cause.
“Maya didn’t marry you for love, Caleb,” Marcus sneered, his grip tightening on the gun. “She married you to get close to Evelyn. To find the ledger. To finish what her father started.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” Marcus pointed at the SD card in my hand. “Plug that into a computer. It’s all there. Your wife is a corporate spy, Caleb. Evelyn found out. That’s why Maya had to disappear.”
A wave of nausea washed over me. I looked at the wall of photos. Was my entire marriage a lie? A long-con for revenge?
“Give me the card, Caleb,” Marcus said, raising the gun again. “I burn the card, I burn this unit, and Evelyn walks free. You and Maya can go live your lives. Just walk away.”
I gripped the locket so hard the metal bit into my palm.
Maya was lying in a hospital bed, fighting for our child’s life. She had survived three days in the dark, without water, terrified and alone.
Spy or not, revenge or not—she was my wife. And she was the mother of my child.
“No,” I said.
Before Marcus could react, I kicked the tire iron on the floor. It spun violently across the concrete, slamming heavily into Marcus’s shin.
He cried out, his leg buckling. The gun went off—CRACK!—the bullet tearing through the silk draping on the wall and shattering a mirror behind it.
I didn’t hesitate. I lunged forward, tackling my uncle to the ground.
He was older, but desperate. He clawed at my face, trying to bring the gun around again. I grabbed his wrist and slammed it against the concrete floor. Once. Twice.
He gasped in pain, his fingers opening. The gun clattered away.
I rolled off him, grabbed the gun, and stood up, aiming it squarely at his chest.
Marcus lay on the floor, panting, blood trickling from a scrape on his forehead.
“It’s over,” I said, my voice shaking with a rage I didn’t know I possessed.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Detective Miller.
“Caleb?” she answered.
“I’m at the storage unit,” I said, not taking my eyes off Marcus. “Send units. Now.”
“We’re already on our way,” Miller said, her voice tight. “But Caleb... you need to get back to the hospital.”
The adrenaline in my veins turned to ice. “Why? Is Maya okay?”
“She’s gone, Caleb.”
“What do you mean, gone? There’s an officer at her door!”
“The officer was assaulted,” Miller said grimly. “Somebody walked right into the ER in scrubs and wheeled her out. The security cameras show them loading her into a private medical transport van ten minutes ago.”
The phone slipped from my ear.
I looked down at the micro-SD card in the locket.
Evelyn hadn’t just wanted the files.
She wanted the baby.
And now, she had her.
“Where did they take her?” I yelled at Marcus, kicking his leg. “Where is my mother?!”
May you like
Marcus laughed, a wet, hacking sound. He looked up at me, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying certainty.
“She took her to the house on the lake, Caleb. The one you haven’t been to since you were a child.” He smiled, his teeth stained red. “But you won’t make it in time. The doctor is already there.”
