Chapter 4 – The Locked Ledger

We brought the little girl, whose name was Mia, back to the mansion. Rosa wept when she saw her, holding the child’s small hand with her good one.

“She looks just like the bakery girl,” Rosa murmured, stroking Mia’s hair.

Vincent paced the library, the heavy oak doors shut against the rest of the house. He was furious, the kind of quiet, calculating fury that made the air in the room feel thin.

“Vanessa kidnapped her,” I said, sitting on the leather sofa, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders. “She took Lily so Marco wouldn’t have a reason to leave her.”

“Marco is weak,” Vincent said, staring out the window into the dark. “Vanessa pulls his strings. If she took your sister, she didn’t do it alone. She used my men. My resources.”

He walked over to a large oil painting of his father and swung it open, revealing a wall safe. He spun the dial, the clicks echoing loudly in the silent room. He pulled out a heavy, leather-bound ledger.

“Every dollar that moves through my family is in here,” Vincent said, laying it on the desk. “If Vanessa hired someone to move Lily, the money came from Marco’s accounts.”

He flipped through the pages. I watched his face change. The anger melted away, replaced by profound confusion.

“What is it?” I asked, standing up.

“The money didn’t come from Marco,” Vincent said, his voice completely hollow.

He turned the ledger toward me. I didn’t understand the numbers, but I saw the names. Payments. Large, recurring payments to a private security firm.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“These payments were authorized by my mother,” Vincent said.

I stared at him. “Rosa? But she’s been sick. She can barely speak.”

“The dates,” Vincent pointed a heavy finger at the page. “These started two years ago. Long before the stroke.”

I looked back at the closed library doors. Rosa was in the other room with my niece. The woman I had been protecting, the woman who seemed like a helpless victim of her son and his fiancée.

“She knew,” I whispered.

“She didn’t just know,” Vincent said, his eyes darkening. “She paid to make your sister disappear.”

The heavy brass handle of the library door suddenly turned with a slow, deliberate click.