Chapter 2 - THE TWELVE BOOKS
“We’re going to my studio.”
Adrien blocked Elena before she could reach the hallway.
“No.”
Her eyes flashed.
“My husband has apparently spent eighteen months using my business to hide something from you, and your answer is no?”
“My answer is that Daniel knows those books exist.”
“So do I.”
“That makes you the person most likely to get there first.”
Elena understood what he meant.
It still made her angry.
For eight years, Daniel had made decisions for her and disguised them as protection. He chose their investments because numbers were “his world.” He handled taxes because she was “too busy.” He even corrected her in restaurants when she ordered wine he thought was too expensive.
She had mistaken control for competence.
She wasn’t letting another man do it.
“I’m going,” she said. “You can come or stay here.”
For a moment, Adrien almost smiled.
“Marcus.”
His lieutenant appeared.
“Bring the car.”
They left through a service entrance before Daniel realized Elena was gone.
Her restoration studio occupied the ground floor of an old brick building in Society Hill. Elena had spent eleven years building it from one rented table and a secondhand press.
She restored damaged family Bibles, nineteenth-century novels, handwritten journals, and books people loved enough to save.
Daniel had always called it her hobby.
The thought suddenly hurt more than it should have.
When they arrived, the front door was locked.
Nothing looked disturbed.
Inside, Elena switched on the work lights.
Twelve leather-bound books sat exactly where Daniel had left them, arranged on the highest shelf in the climate-controlled storage room.
Adrien stopped beneath them.
“What did he tell you?”
“Private collection. Water damage. Owner didn’t want them handled until an insurance dispute was settled.”
“For eighteen months?”
“I asked him twice.”
“And?”
“He got angry.”
She looked at Adrien.
“I stopped asking.”
That admission embarrassed her.
Adrien didn’t pity her.
He simply said, “You’re asking now.”
Elena pulled on cotton gloves and lowered the first volume.
It was an 1892 edition of The Count of Monte Cristo.
“Appropriate,” Adrien murmured.
She ignored him.
The binding looked old, but something about the spine bothered her.
“The leather isn’t original.”
“How can you tell?”
“Wrong grain. And whoever replaced it wanted it to look older than it is.”
She opened the book carefully.
Nothing.
Second book.
Nothing.
Third.
On the fourth, Elena felt resistance near the back board.
Her pulse quickened.
She slid a microspatula beneath the endpaper.
Someone had created a false layer.
Inside was a thin strip of microfilm.
Adrien went still.
Elena looked at him.
“You know what this is?”
“I know what it could be.”
They checked the remaining books.
Seven contained microfilm.
Two contained narrow sheets covered with account numbers.
One held a small brass key.
Another contained a photograph.
Elena stared at it.
Daniel stood beside a younger Vanessa outside a row house.
Between them was the man from Adrien’s security photograph.
But that wasn’t what made Elena sit down.
A fourth person stood at the edge of the picture.
Adrien.
He looked ten years younger.
Elena turned the photograph toward him.
“You said you recognized that man.”
“I did.”
“Then start talking.”
Adrien’s jaw tightened.
“His name is Gabriel Mercer.”
“What does he have to do with you?”
“He used to work for my father.”
Elena waited.
Adrien looked at the photograph.
“My father trusted him with everything.”
“Until?”
“Until my father died and forty million dollars disappeared.”
Elena stared at him.
“When?”
“Eleven years ago.”
The exact year Elena had opened her studio.
A cold sensation moved across her shoulders.
“That’s why you’ve been looking for these records.”
“Yes.”
“And Daniel found them?”
“Maybe.”
Elena studied the photograph again.
Something was wrong.
Adrien wasn’t standing with the others.
He was farther back, caught accidentally in the frame.
Watching them.
“What happened after this picture?”
“Gabriel disappeared.”
“You thought he stole the money.”
“I knew someone did.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Adrien met her eyes.
“No. I never proved Gabriel did it.”
Marcus returned from checking the building.
“Boss.”
Something in his voice changed the room.
“The back entrance was forced recently.”
“How recently?”
“Maybe tonight.”
Elena immediately looked toward the books.
Someone else had already been here.
She examined the shelf.
Dust marked eleven rectangles.
Not twelve.
One book had been moved recently enough to leave no dust line beneath it.
“The green volume,” Elena said.
Adrien looked at her.
“What green volume?”
“There were twelve books, but that isn’t the original twelve.”
She pointed toward a brown volume on the end.
“That one replaced another.”
“How do you know?”
“I photographed the collection when Daniel brought it in.”
She crossed to her computer.
The photograph was still archived with the intake records.
Twelve books.
The missing volume was green leather with gold corners.
Adrien leaned closer to the screen.
His face changed.
“What?”
He enlarged the image.
Stamped faintly on the spine was a crest.
A falcon beneath a crown.
Adrien whispered, “That belonged to my mother.”
Elena turned.
“Your mother?”
“She kept one private ledger after my father died. Nobody ever found it.”
“So Daniel had it?”
“Apparently.”
“Why would your mother’s ledger be in my studio?”
Adrien didn’t answer.
Elena opened the digital intake form.
Daniel had delivered the books, but the ownership line listed a different name.
E. Carter.
Her own.
“No.”
She scrolled farther.
Insurance valuation: $280,000.
Owner’s acquisition date: fourteen years earlier.
Three years before she had even met Daniel.
Adrien read over her shoulder.
“He didn’t just hide the books here.”
“He made them mine.”
Elena felt sick.
A sound came from the front room.
Marcus drew his weapon, but Adrien raised a hand.
They moved quietly toward the noise.
Nobody was there.
The mail slot had fallen shut.
On the floor lay an envelope.
No name.
Inside was a single train ticket.
Philadelphia to Baltimore.
Dated eleven years earlier.
And wrapped inside it was a woman’s gold bracelet.
Adrien took one look at the bracelet and stopped breathing.
Elena had never seen fear on his face before.
Not at the party.
Not after the stolen millions.
Not even when Gabriel Mercer appeared on the security camera.
But she saw it now.
“That was my mother’s,” he said.
Elena looked at the train ticket.
There was handwriting across the back.
Three words.
ASK DANIEL’S FATHER.
Elena slowly raised her eyes.
“Daniel told me his father died when he was sixteen.”
Adrien stared at the bracelet in his palm.
“He lied.”
Then Marcus, who had been examining the photograph, turned it over.
On the back was a handwritten date.
And beneath it, another message.
Adrien read it aloud.
“Thomas Carter has the ledger.”
Elena’s blood ran cold.
May you like
Thomas Carter.
Daniel’s supposedly dead father.
