Chapter 2 - The Ledgers of the Dead
The grandfather clock in the grand hallway chimed 2:00 AM.
The mansion was silent, save for the hum of the security monitors in the basement guardroom.
Christopher sat at his desk, lit only by a single green banker's lamp. Spread across the dark wood were three leather-bound journals covered in dust, along with a stack of bank wire receipts from 2014.
Sitting across from him in a leather armchair was Hannah. She wore a simple dark sweater, her eyes tired, watching Christopher read her father’s neat, precise penmanship.
August 14, 2014: Victor Delacroix has opened six shell accounts in Panama under my name using forged signature stamps. He is skimming $2 million a month from the port grain terminals. I told Julian [Christopher's father] today that we need a independent audit. Julian promised to look into it tomorrow morning...
Christopher closed the journal softly.
He looked up at Hannah. For the first time in his life, the ruthless mafia don saw not an employee, nor an enemy, but a girl who had spent twelve years carrying the heavy, crushing weight of a dead father’s stolen honor.
"He wrote about you," Christopher spoke softly, his voice dropping its usual cold edge. "In the last entry... three days before his arrest. He said his only regret was that he wouldn't be there to see you graduate."
Hannah swallowed hard, looking away toward the dark window, tears glistening on her lashes.
"I spent eight years in state foster homes, Mr. Delacroix," Hannah whispered. "Every time someone asked who my father was, I had to lie. If I said his name, people looked at me like I was the daughter of a murderer. I took a job as a cleaning girl at your estate six months ago because I thought if I could just find those journals, I could give my father his name back."
"Why didn't you take them and run?" Christopher asked, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the desk. "You had access to my private study every morning at 6:00 AM. You could have taken the files three months ago."
Hannah looked directly into his eyes—clean, honest, and unshakeable.
"Because your mother was dying," Hannah answered simply. "The first week I worked here, I heard her crying in her room at night because her chemotherapy was burning her veins. The private nurses you hired paid no attention to her—they just filled out their charts and sat on their phones. I couldn't leave a sick old woman alone in a dark house, even if she was a Delacroix."
Christopher felt a sharp, agonizing knot form in his chest.
His entire life, he had believed that loyalty was bought with high salaries, fear, and armed bodyguards. He had paid fifty thousand dollars a month to top medical coordinators, yet a twenty-three-year-old girl earning twenty dollars an hour had given his mother the dignity to survive another day.
May you like
He reached across the desk, picking up the heavy silver signet ring that belonged to his father, and set it down in front of Hannah.
"Your father’s name will be cleared, Hannah," Christopher said, his dark eyes burning with an absolute, lethal promise. "Not just in a court of law, but across this entire city. And the man who stole your childhood will answer to me."
