Chapter 2 - The Secret Ledger
The glass door of the lawyer's office clicked shut behind us with a sharp, final sound.
We stood on the concrete steps under the grey afternoon sky, the cold wind biting through our coats.
None of us moved toward our cars.
The atmosphere between us had curdled from casual sibling rivalry into something venomous and fragile.
Daniel broke the silence first, his voice shaking despite his attempt to sound authoritative.
"We need to stick together. Whatever game the old lady set up, we ignore it."
Olivia turned on him, her eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp fury.
"Ignore it? Daniel, she threatened to hand over twenty-eight million dollars to a stranger if we fail!"
"She's dead, Olivia!" Daniel snapped back, stepping down the stairs. "She's just manipulating us from the grave like she always did!"
"Is she?" I asked quietly, pulling my coat tighter around my shoulders. "Then why did you turn white when I mentioned Apartment 4B?"
Daniel froze, his hand resting on the door handle of his luxury sedan.
He didn't look back at me.
"I didn't turn white. It's just cold."
"You looked like you had seen a ghost," Olivia whispered, stepping closer to me. "And you know something about those payments. You manage the family accounts. You see every single wire transfer."
Daniel jerked his car door open and slid inside without answering.
The engine roared to life, and tires screeched against the asphalt as he sped away, leaving us standing in the exhaust fumes.
Olivia watched him disappear down the street, her jaw clenched.
"He knows," she muttered. "Daniel always knows where the money flows."
"We need to find out what he's hiding before the thirty days run out," I said, looking down at the heavy black envelope clutched in my hand.
"My envelope told me to dig into Daniel's corporate spending records over the last six months," Olivia confessed quietly, looking away.
I stared at her in shock. "Your task was to investigate Daniel?"
"Yes," she said, her voice trembling. "And your task is to find the woman in Apartment 4B and figure out why grandmother paid her for eighteen years."
"Eighteen years," I repeated, the number echoing in my mind. "That's how old I am."
Olivia didn't say anything, but the look in her eyes confirmed the terrifying thought we were both too afraid to speak aloud.
If the baby in that photograph wore my silver bracelet, and the payments started eighteen years ago... someone in this family was a lie.
We parted ways without another word, driving back to the sprawling estate we had called home our entire lives.
The house felt entirely different now—not like a sanctuary, but like a museum built on a foundation of deception.
I went straight to my grandmother's private study on the third floor, a room she had kept locked during her final weeks.
Using a spare key I found in my coat pocket—one she had given me weeks ago with a cryptic warning—I unlocked the heavy mahogany door.
The room smelled of old paper, lavender, and dust.
The mahogany desk sat precisely where it always had, its surface bare except for a heavy leather-bound ledger.
I walked across the creaking hardwood floor and opened the ledger to the bookmarked page.
Rows of financial transactions stared back at me, dating back nearly two decades.
Every single month, a transfer of five thousand dollars was sent to an account registered under the name Clara Vance at an address downtown.
Apartment 4B.
Below the most recent entry, my grandmother's shaky handwriting was scrawled in black ink.
The truth is in the ledger, but the cost is your name.
I flipped back through the pages, tracing the monthly payments year by year, until I found a handwritten note clipped to the margin of a page from eighteen years ago.
It was a bank deposit slip, and next to it was a birth certificate registration number.
I pulled out my phone and took a photograph of the page, my hands trembling so badly the image came out blurry.
I took a deep breath, steadied my fingers, and snapped a clean photo.
Before I could examine the details further, a heavy thud echoed from the hallway outside the study.
May you like
I froze, holding my breath.
The door handle of the private study began to turn slowly.
