Chapter 3 - THE HIDDEN LEDGER
I left Celeste shaking in the sitting room, her phone already clutched frantically in her hand as she dialed the number of her father's estate lawyer. I didn't stop her. Let them panic. Let them scramble to patch the holes in a sinking ship.
I headed straight upstairs to the west wing, past the locked door of my mother's bedroom, and walked toward the small, disused study at the end of the hall—Ewan’s old room.
For six years, nobody had entered this room. Following his supposed death, my mother had ordered the door locked, unable to bear the ghost of her youngest son. The air inside smelled of dust, old paper, and dried lavender. Sunlight cut through the grime on the windows, illuminating floating specks of gold.
If Ewan had found transfer slips linking Celeste's family to the embezzlement of South Side dock funds, he wouldn't have kept them in a bank vault where corporate auditors could flag them. He would have kept them here, hidden inside the house he trusted.
I started at the bookshelves, pulling out volumes of maritime law and financial history. Nothing. I checked behind the heavy oak desk, running my hands along the underside of the panels until my fingers brushed against a small, magnetic latch hidden beneath the knee-hole.
With a soft click, a secret panel slid open in the baseboard.
Inside sat a small, fireproof metal lockbox. I pulled it out, dusted off the soot from the old estate fire that had drifted through the ventilation shafts years ago, and entered the four-digit combination—Ewan’s birthday.
The lid popped open.
Inside were not just transfer slips. There was a bound ledger, several printed emails between Celeste's father and a corrupt city zoning commissioner, and a microcassette recorder.
My hands trembled slightly as I pressed play on the recorder.
Ewan’s voice filled the quiet, dusty room, clear and urgent. “If you’re hearing this, Julian, it means I didn’t make it out of the docks. Celeste and her father aren't just buying shipping lanes; they're smuggling weapons through Pier 44 under the cover of commercial grain imports. They used our family's logistics network. And if you ask questions, they’ll bury you right beside me.”
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The tape clicked off.
I sat back on my heels in the middle of the dusty floor, the weight of the revelation crushing down on my chest. My brother hadn't died in an accident. He had uncovered a treasonous criminal enterprise operating right underneath our noses—and the woman I was supposed to marry in three weeks had signed his death warrant.
