Chapter 6 - The Name in the Ledger
Ethan laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the accusation was impossible.
“I've never taken money from Richard.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“That's not what the ledger says.”
“What does it say?”
“That you paid him.”
Ethan stared.
“For what?”
Vanessa hesitated.
Clara watched her carefully.
“For Clara's disappearance.”
Silence.
Clara slowly turned toward Ethan.
He looked wounded.
“You believe that?”
“I don't know what I believe anymore.”
Ethan stepped backward.
“I spent two years mourning you.”
“And I spent two years believing someone around you wanted me gone.”
“Not me.”
“Then prove it.”
Those words hurt him.
But Ethan understood them.
Trust could not simply return because love had once existed.
Detective Reed examined the records.
The payments attributed to Ethan had been authorized electronically.
But the dates revealed something.
The first transfer occurred while Ethan was in surgery after a skiing accident.
Someone had used his credentials.
Richard's conspiracy had been designed not only to steal from Caldwell Holdings but to create a trail that could frame Ethan if necessary.
Clara exhaled.
“I shouldn't have doubted you.”
“You had every reason to.”
He looked at her.
“But when this is over, I don't want us living on assumptions anymore.”
Neither said the word marriage.
Neither said love.
It was too soon.
They focused on Margaret Sloan.
Vanessa knew of a private estate in Vermont.
They traveled under police protection.
The estate was empty.
But beneath the house they found a locked basement room.
Inside were medical supplies.
A bed.
Chains attached to a wall.
Clara stared at them.
Memories flooded back.
Ethan took her hand.
Then they heard movement.
A woman emerged from behind a storage cabinet.
Thin.
Terrified.
Older than Clara remembered.
“Margaret?”
The woman collapsed into Clara's arms.
She was alive.
And she knew everything.
Richard had forced her to create the false financial trail.
She had kept one original copy of his ledger.
“Where?”
Margaret smiled weakly.
“Where nobody rich ever thinks to look.”
“Where?”
“In a library.”
The ledger was hidden inside an ordinary donated book at a public library in Boston.
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But Richard knew Margaret had been found.
And he was already heading there.
