Chapter 3 – THE LEATHER JOURNAL AND THE MONSTER

“Step away from him, Adrian.”

Marcus Cross leveled the pistol directly at Adrian’s chest. The calm, sophisticated demeanor he had worn at the dinner party was entirely gone.

I backed up against the wall, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Adrian didn’t raise his hands. He didn’t cower.

He looked at the note in his hand, then looked at Marcus.

“My father tried to drown his own son,” Adrian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “And you watched him do it.”

“Your father was a visionary,” Marcus spat. “But he was paranoid. Daniel found out about the offshore accounts. He found out your father was stealing from the commission. The boy was going to the police.”

Marcus took a step into the room, kicking the door shut behind him.

“We took him out on the lake to scare him,” Marcus continued. “But Daniel fought back. The boat tipped. When your father realized the boy would never keep his mouth shut, he made a choice to protect the empire.”

“And when he survived?” Adrian asked.

“He was brain-damaged. A vegetable. Your father paid me to keep him out of sight, and I used it as leverage. As long as I held the secret, the Moretti family owed me.”

Marcus aimed the gun at Margaret.

“But then the boy woke up. And this meddling old woman started poking around. Vivienne paid her to leave, but she just couldn’t let it go.”

Margaret stood bravely in front of Daniel’s wheelchair, shielding him. “You are a monster, Marcus.”

“I am a pragmatist,” Marcus corrected. “And unfortunately, neither of you are leaving this room.”

Before Marcus could pull the trigger, Adrian lunged.

He didn’t go for the gun. He grabbed a heavy metal IV pole next to the bed and swung it like a baseball bat.

The heavy steel base caught Marcus square in the shoulder.

The gun fired, the suppressed shot burying itself into the drywall inches from my head. I screamed, dropping to the floor.

Marcus stumbled backward, dropping the weapon.

Adrian tackled him to the linoleum, delivering a brutal, sickening punch to Marcus’s jaw. The older man went limp instantly.

Adrian stood up, his chest heaving, his knuckles bloody.

He picked up the pistol and shoved it into his waistband.

“Sophie,” Adrian ordered, his eyes wild. “Grab the wheelchair. We are getting him out of here right now.”

I scrambled to my feet, my hands shaking so badly I could barely unlock the brakes on Daniel’s chair.

We pushed Daniel out the side door, leaving Marcus unconscious on the floor.

We loaded Daniel into the back of the SUV with Margaret. I jumped into the driver’s seat.

“Where do we go?” I panicked as I started the engine. “We can’t go back to the mansion. Vivienne will have his men waiting.”

“My father’s old safe house,” Adrian said. “On the South Side. Only I know the code.”

I drove through the storm, terrified of every set of headlights behind us.

When we reached the safe house—a modest, unassuming brick building in a quiet neighborhood—we carried Daniel inside. We laid him on a couch near the fireplace. Margaret immediately went to the kitchen to find warm blankets.

Adrian paced the living room, running his hands through his hair.

“I need proof,” Adrian muttered. “If I go to the family council and tell them Marcus tried to kill my brother, Vivienne will deny it. She’ll say I’m insane. I need proof of the blackmail.”

I looked around the dusty, untouched safe house. It hadn’t been lived in for years.

“Mr. Moretti,” I said softly.

He looked at me.

“If your father kept Daniel a secret… wouldn’t he have kept a record of the payments? Somewhere Marcus couldn’t find it?”

Adrian stared at me.

Then he looked at the massive oak bookshelf against the far wall.

“My father never trusted anyone,” Adrian whispered.

He walked over to the bookshelf and began pulling dusty volumes off the shelves. Behind a row of encyclopedias, he found a small wall safe.

He punched in a four-digit code. His birth year.

The safe beeped and opened.

Inside was a thick, black leather journal.

Adrian pulled it out and opened it on the coffee table. I stood beside him, watching as he flipped through pages of handwritten notes, bank transfers, and offshore account numbers.

“Here,” Adrian pointed to a page dated ten years ago.

Payment to Marcus Cross. $50,000. For St. Jude silence.

The payments occurred every month. For two decades.

But as Adrian turned to the final page, his blood went cold.

The payments to Marcus had stopped three years ago.

Instead, a new name was written.

Payment transferred. Beneficiary: Vivienne Cross.

Adrian stepped back from the table.

Vivienne hadn’t just discovered the secret when she paid Margaret.

She had inherited the blackmail from her father three years ago.

She had initiated the engagement to Adrian not out of love, but to secure the entire Moretti empire before Daniel ever woke up.

But as I looked closer at the final page, my heart stopped.

There was a clipped pharmacy receipt attached to the page. It listed the sedatives that had been keeping Daniel in a coma.

And the signature authorizing the heavy dosage of those sedatives didn’t belong to a doctor.

It belonged to my brother, Lucas.

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