Chapter 3 - The Man Waiting Outside
By Christmas morning, the storm had buried most of northern Westchester beneath nearly thirty inches of snow.
Nobody at DeLuca House celebrated.
The dining room remained empty.
The Christmas music had been turned off.
Security men moved through hallways where politicians and businessmen had been drinking only hours earlier.
I remained upstairs.
Roman remained nearby.
Vivian and Howard Mercer were technically guests.
But everyone understood they were being watched.
The photograph from Daniel Voss's abandoned vehicle sat on Roman's desk.
It showed me leaving Lily's apartment.
Jeans.
Winter coat.
A grocery bag.
Completely unaware.
A second photograph had been found beneath it.
Lily.
She was walking into Hudson State College carrying two textbooks.
Roman didn't show me that one immediately.
Marco did.
He said hiding it would only make things worse if I discovered it later.
He was right.
My hands started shaking.
“Why Lily?”
“We don't know.”
“Where is she?”
“We sent two people.”
I looked at him.
“To her apartment?”
“Yes.”
“She'll freak out.”
“She can be angry and alive.”
Roman had entered the room behind him.
I stared at him.
“She doesn't know anything about your world.”
Roman's expression tightened.
“This isn't my world, Claire.”
I laughed once.
Weakly.
“There's an abandoned car with surveillance photos and bolt cutters because I work for a normal businessman?”
Marco wisely left.
Roman closed the door.
“I didn't mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?”
He sat in the chair beside the window.
For a moment, he didn't look dangerous.
He looked tired.
“I mean whatever this is, it started before last night.”
“You don't know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
He put a folder on the blanket.
Inside were copies of security logs.
“Someone accessed the employee records system six weeks ago.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Your emergency contact information. Address. Banking details.”
“Who?”
“We don't know yet.”
My first instinct was humiliation.
People with money never understood how exposed poor people could feel when someone looked through their finances.
Every late payment.
Every loan.
Every desperate decision.
Roman must have seen my expression.
He closed the folder.
“You don't need to explain the debt.”
“Vivian knows.”
“I know.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
His face softened slightly.
“Mrs. Patel told me what Vivian said.”
I looked away.
“She shouldn't have.”
“She was trying to protect you.”
“I don't need protection.”
“You were found unconscious in a blizzard.”
“That doesn't mean I want pity.”
“I don't pity you.”
That made me look back.
Roman leaned forward.
“I respect what you've done for your sister.”
My throat tightened.
“Don't.”
“Don't what?”
“Be kind to me right now.”
Something shifted between us.
Dangerous in an entirely different way.
Roman sat back.
“Why?”
“Because you're engaged.”
Silence.
The word hung there.
Then Roman said, “That may be changing.”
Before I could answer, Marco knocked and entered.
“We found Voss.”
Roman stood instantly.
“Where?”
“Not him physically. His phone.”
The device had connected briefly to a cellular tower near White Plains at 4:13 a.m.
Then disappeared.
But during those few minutes, investigators had recovered metadata from a message.
One outgoing photograph.
Sent to a prepaid number.
The photograph was taken inside the carriage house.
It showed the wine storage shelves.
On the floor beneath them sat a black leather folder.
Roman enlarged the image.
“What's that?”
I stared.
“I saw it.”
Both men turned to me.
“When?”
“Three nights ago.”
Roman's eyebrows lowered.
“Where?”
“In the library.”
Howard Mercer had arrived early for a private dinner.
I had carried coffee inside.
He had been sitting with Vivian.
The black folder was on the table.
The moment I entered, Vivian closed it.
At the time, I hadn't thought much of it.
Now I remembered something else.
A white label.
Three letters.
RDL.
Roman Dominic DeLuca.
Roman recognized them too.
He looked at Marco.
“Search the carriage house.”
Twenty minutes later, security returned with the folder.
It had been hidden beneath a loose floorboard.
Inside were photocopies of financial agreements.
Property transfers.
Corporate ownership documents.
Bank records.
I understood almost none of them.
Roman understood immediately.
His face became terrifyingly calm.
“These are forged.”
Marco took one.
“How bad?”
“If they were filed together, Mercer could claim controlling interest in three holding companies.”
“Yours?”
“Mine.”
I looked between them.
“Why hide them there?”
Roman turned pages.
“To move them without being seen.”
Then he stopped.
On the final sheet was a witness signature line.
Already completed.
My name was written there.
Claire Bennett.
I stared at it.
“That isn't my signature.”
Roman looked at me.
“I know.”
“No, I mean I've never seen this.”
“I believe you.”
The paper stated that I had witnessed Roman signing an asset transfer seven days earlier.
Impossible.
Seven days earlier I had spent the evening at the hospital with Lily after one of her routine neurological scans.
Someone had forged my name.
Now the reason for Vivian's interest in my debt became clearer.
If the documents were discovered, I was the witness.
If I disappeared—
I looked at Roman.
“They were going to blame me.”
Marco answered.
“Possibly.”
“Why send me outside?”
Roman's eyes went cold.
“Because if Voss got you away from the house, there would be no witness left to deny the signature.”
I felt sick.
“But why not just fire me?”
“Because fired employees can talk.”
Roman's answer was quiet.
Too quiet.
“And dead employees can't?”
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
My hands went numb again, but not from cold.
I looked down at the forged document.
Then something caught my attention.
The date beside my fake signature.
December 17.
I knew that date.
Not simply because I had been with Lily.
Because something else had happened.
My father had once kept every financial document connected to Lily's treatment in an old blue accordion folder.
After he died, I inherited it.
On December 17, I had finally taken it out of storage because a collection agency sent another notice.
And inside that folder, I had found something strange.
An original loan agreement.
One I hadn't understood.
At the bottom was the name of the private lender who had given my father the largest emergency loan.
Mercer Capital Recovery.
I looked up.
“Roman.”
He saw the change in my face.
“What is it?”
“My father's debt.”
“What about it?”
“It belongs to Vivian's family.”
Roman went completely still.
And suddenly, the story was no longer about me accidentally becoming useful to the Mercers.
Maybe I had been connected to them long before I ever entered DeLuca House.
May you like
And if that was true, the question was no longer why Vivian wanted me gone—it was what my dead father had known about the Mercer family before he died.
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