Chapter 6 - THE GREEN LEDGER
Nobody moved.
Luca lowered the gun only slightly.
“Where?”
Daniel looked at Isabella.
“You really don’t know?”
She shook her head.
“Margaret changed the plan.”
Daniel exhaled.
“The green ledger never left Romano property.”
Emily stared at him.
“You had it.”
“For forty minutes.”
“What did you do with it?”
“What your mother told me.”
He pointed upward.
Luca’s gaze followed.
“The attic?”
“No.”
“The walls?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Giuseppe Romano’s study.”
Luca’s father’s old office had remained locked since his death.
Not because anyone feared secrets.
Because Isabella refused to let the room be changed.
The irony wasn’t lost on Luca.
They entered together.
Dark walnut shelves.
A massive desk.
Old photographs.
The smell of leather that somehow survived the man.
Daniel walked to the fireplace.
Above it hung a ceremonial silver serving tray.
Nearly identical to the one Emily had used earlier.
He lifted it.
Behind the tray was a narrow wall compartment.
Empty.
Daniel swore.
“The ledger was here.”
Luca turned.
“Who knew?”
“Margaret. Me.”
“Anyone else?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Helen.”
Emily laughed bitterly.
“Of course Helen.”
The school nurse.
The therapist.
The woman who had helped erase her memory.
Daniel looked ashamed.
“She wasn’t supposed to drug you that heavily.”
“You watched?”
“I was outside.”
“So everybody was outside while people decided what happened to my mind.”
Daniel lowered his eyes.
“Yes.”
That honesty stopped her anger from becoming screaming.
Luca searched the compartment.
A folded piece of green leather remained caught behind one hinge.
Same material as Emily’s memory.
The ledger had been there.
Recently.
Dust marks showed it had been removed within months.
Nine months.
Again.
Around the time Emily was hired.
Someone had removed the ledger, planted Emily into the household, and begun forcing her memory awake.
“They needed something from me,” Emily said.
Luca nodded.
“A location.”
“But the book was here.”
“Maybe not anymore.”
Anthony stared at the empty space.
“Or there was something inside the ledger Margaret hid separately.”
Emily remembered Sarah’s words from the therapy note.
Your mom has the book.
Not the papers.
Book.
She closed her eyes.
Smoke.
Green leather.
Sarah crying.
Margaret kneeling.
Emily, listen to me. The names don’t matter without the account numbers.
Her eyes opened.
“Accounts.”
Luca turned.
“What?”
“The ledger had names.”
“And?”
“Something else had the money.”
Daniel understood.
“Bank records.”
Isabella gripped the desk.
“If the ledger exposed who was paid, another record showed where the money came from.”
“And where it went,” Luca said.
That could destroy far more than a family.
Police.
Judges.
Politicians.
Business owners.
People who might still be powerful.
Emily looked toward the family photographs.
“Who removed the ledger?”
Luca followed the question logically.
Who had access to his father’s locked study?
Luca.
Isabella.
Anthony.
Daniel.
Household security.
And staff under supervision.
Then Emily remembered the camera failures.
“Daniel.”
He looked at her.
“You control security.”
“Yes.”
“The cameras near me failed.”
“Yes.”
“You said the archive was corrupted.”
“Yes.”
Luca’s face changed.
Daniel didn’t run.
Didn’t deny it.
“I corrupted them.”
Anthony stepped forward.
“You son of a—”
Luca raised a hand.
“Why?”
“To protect Emily.”
She stared.
Daniel continued.
“The first time I saw someone following her through the west corridor, I deleted the footage before they could access it.”
“Who is they?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve been lying for three weeks.”
“I’ve been lying for fifteen years.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
Daniel looked at Emily.
“Someone contacted me nine months ago.”
Her pulse jumped.
“The recommendation letter.”
“Yes.”
“They told you to hire me?”
“They sent proof Margaret’s ledger was missing.”
“And you thought bringing me here would help?”
“I thought the person behind it believed you remembered where the bank record was.”
Emily’s anger rose.
“So you used me as bait.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Daniel didn’t defend himself.
After a moment he said, “Yes.”
Luca hit him.
Once.
Hard.
Daniel went against the bookcase.
Emily flinched but didn’t look away.
Luca’s voice was low.
“You put her inside my house knowing someone dangerous would follow.”
“I also knew it was the safest property in Maryland.”
“Apparently not.”
Daniel wiped blood from his mouth.
“No.”
The reversal was ugly.
Daniel had hidden footage to protect Emily.
And endangered her to expose the person stalking her.
Both things were true.
Emily understood something she was beginning to hate.
People were rarely one thing.
Daniel reached into his pocket slowly.
Luca watched.
He removed an old photograph.
Sarah at seven.
Sitting on a hospital bed after the fire.
Alive.
Emily took it with both hands.
Sarah’s hair was singed.
Bandages wrapped one arm.
Around her wrist—
the E-M-I-L-Y bracelet.
On the bedside table was a green book.
Emily looked closer.
Under it lay an envelope.
Her own handwriting.
FOR DAD.
“I wrote that?”
Daniel nodded.
“What was inside?”
“I never saw.”
“Where did it go?”
“Thomas took it.”
Emily remembered the train tickets.
Her father and Sarah.
Philadelphia.
“He took Sarah.”
Daniel nodded.
“That’s what I always believed.”
“Then why tell me she died?”
“Because someone tried to kill her in the hospital.”
Silence.
“What?”
“A medication order was changed.”
Isabella whispered, “We moved her.”
Daniel nodded.
“Thomas left Baltimore with her.”
Emily’s eyes filled.
“My father raised me in Pennsylvania.”
“Yes.”
“Sarah was with him?”
“No.”
The answer stunned her.
“Then where did he take her?”
Daniel looked at the photograph.
“I never knew.”
Emily thought about her father’s kidney illness.
His hospital bills.
His quiet life.
His insistence she never visit Baltimore until she took the Romano job.
Then something clicked.
“His house.”
Luca frowned.
“What?”
“My father has a locked cedar chest.”
She had seen it a thousand times.
At the foot of his bed.
He called it her mother’s keepsakes.
Emily never opened it because Thomas asked her not to.
Inside, she had always assumed, were Margaret’s things.
Photographs.
Letters.
Grief.
“What if the bank records are in the chest?”
They drove to Pennsylvania before sunrise.
Thomas Carter’s small house was dark.
Emily used her key.
“Dad?”
No answer.
His bedroom was empty.
The cedar chest stood open.
Nothing inside except a child’s stuffed rabbit.
One ear burned black.
Emily’s knees weakened.
Sarah’s rabbit.
Luca lifted it carefully.
Something was sewn beneath the fabric.
A train-station storage receipt.
Philadelphia.
Dated fifteen years earlier.
Locker 317.
Emily turned it over.
On the back, Thomas had written:
If Emily remembers the woman in the blue coat, everything begins again.
Below that was today’s date.
Emily stared at it.
“My father wrote this recently.”
Luca looked toward the open bedroom window.
A blue thread was caught on the latch.
Emily touched it.
Wool.
From a coat.
Then the bathroom door opened.
Thomas Carter stepped out.
Pale.
Older than Emily had ever seen him.
He looked at the stuffed rabbit in her hands.
Then at Luca.
And whispered:
“You brought a Romano here.”
Emily’s eyes filled.
“Dad, where is Sarah?”
Thomas said nothing.
“Is she alive?”
His face broke.
“Yes.”
Emily stopped breathing.
“Where?”
Thomas looked toward the front hallway.
Then said the sentence that made Luca reach for his gun.
May you like
“She’s been in Baltimore the whole time.”
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