Chapter 2 - THE BROWN LEATHER LEDGER
The call came Monday morning while Claire was polishing the staircase railing.
“Ms. Monroe?” the hospital billing supervisor said. “Your daughter’s balance has been cleared.”
Claire gripped the phone.
“All of it?”
“And future scheduled treatment has been prepaid through next June.”
“Who paid?”
“The donor requested confidentiality.”
There was only one person in Claire’s life capable of making that kind of money disappear without asking permission.
She found Nathaniel in the conservatory.
“You paid Lily’s hospital bills.”
He continued reading.
“That is not a question.”
“Why?”
Now he looked up.
“Because she needs treatment.”
“That doesn’t explain why you did it.”
Nathaniel’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly.
“Children should not pay for the failures of adults.”
Then he returned to the document in his hand.
Conversation over.
That afternoon, Mrs. Alvarez sent Claire into the west study to dust while Nathaniel attended a meeting.
The room was darker than the rest of the mansion.
Claire was cleaning his desk when she noticed the bottom drawer sitting slightly open.
Inside was a thick brown leather ledger.
Beside it was a folder.
CLAIRE MONROE.
Her stomach tightened.
She pulled the folder out.
Employment records.
Old addresses.
Lily’s medical information.
And a photograph of a man standing beside a white cargo truck at Baltimore Harbor.
Eric Monroe.
Claire’s ex-husband.
The man who had abandoned her fourteen months earlier after emptying their savings and leaving her with credit-card debt she had never authorized.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
“Hello?”
Eric’s voice came through.
“Still curious, Claire?”
Her blood turned cold.
“Where are you?”
“Closer than you think.”
“What do you want?”
“The brown leather ledger.”
Claire looked at the drawer.
“How do you know about that?”
Eric laughed.
“You still ask too many questions.”
“Stay away from Lily.”
His voice became softer.
“That depends on you.”
Claire stopped breathing.
“Bring the ledger Sunday night. Pier Eleven.”
“No.”
“Then maybe somebody asks whether a woman drowning in debt and working inside a criminal’s mansion is really stable enough to raise a sick child.”
The line went dead.
Claire stood frozen until the study door opened behind her.
Nathaniel was there.
He looked at the phone in her hand.
Then at Eric’s photograph lying on the desk.
“He called you.”
It wasn’t a question.
Claire turned toward him.
“You knew he would.”
Nathaniel said nothing.
That silence hurt more than an admission.
“You hired me because of Eric.”
“Yes.”
Claire’s face went cold.
“So my job was a trap?”
Nathaniel closed the door.
“At first,” he said, “you were a question.”
“And now?”
His eyes moved toward the garden, where Lily was drawing beneath the magnolia tree.
“Now someone has threatened a child inside my house.”
May you like
Nathaniel reached into the drawer and placed the brown ledger between them.
“That makes Eric Monroe my problem too.”
