Chapter 3: The Ledger in the Dark
The East Wing library at 2:00 AM was a cathedral of shadows. Dust motes drifted lazily through shafts of moonlight cutting through the twelve-foot arched windows, illuminating millions of dollars worth of leather-bound first editions. My job was to polish the mahogany baseboards, but my knees were currently planted on the Persian rug in front of the southern reading alcove, my fingers tracing the carved wooden paneling beneath the lowest shelf of nineteenth-century poetry.
Higgins had dropped a hint three nights ago while pretending to check the silver inventory: “The old man built this house to hide things, child. Not just books.”
I pressed my thumb against a knot in the mahogany depicting a carved oak leaf. With a faint, oiled click, the entire floor-to-ceiling shelving unit drifted forward half an inch on concealed iron pivots. My breath hitched in my throat. I glanced over my shoulder down the empty, echoing corridor before slipping my fingers into the gap and pulling the heavy wood outward.
Behind the shelf was a narrow, windowless vertical cavity no wider than a coffin. Inside hung a single brass wall sconce with an electric toggle switch. I flicked it on. The pale, flickering light revealed a small safe set into the brickwork and a metal filing cabinet covered in a fine layer of grey ash.
I didn't touch the safe. Instead, I pulled open the top drawer of the cabinet. It was packed with personnel files—not current staff, but termination records dating back a decade. I began flipping through them with trembling fingers, my eyes scanning the margins for familiar names.
Chloe Miller. Resigned due to 'family relocation.'
Sarah Jenkins. Dismissed for 'theft.'
Elena Rostova. Contract terminated 'medical leave.'
Attached to Elena Rostova’s file was a handwritten memo on Julianne’s personal monogrammed stationery, dated three years ago: “The girl talks too much about the East Pier shipments. Arrange her departure before Dominic asks questions.”
My stomach seized. The East Pier shipments—the very docks Dominic’s logistics empire ran through, rumored to handle things far darker than imported textiles. Elena hadn't just been fired; she had been erased. And right beneath her file lay an empty manila folder bearing my own legal surname—the one I had dropped the day I took employment at the Mercer estate under a forged reference. They already knew who I was. They had known from the moment I walked through the iron gates.
May you like
A floorboard creaked in the outer library.
I shoved the files back into the drawer, slammed the cabinet shut, and threw my weight against the mahogany shelving just as the library doors at the far end clicked open.
