Oh, fuck me. This asshole is going to get us arrested. Which means shit, since I can’t leave.
Then I frown and stare at him. Can he leave? Can he walk out of the gates and into the real world?
His eyes meet mine. “No can do, Lynx boy.”
Sighing, I shake my head and bring my attention back to the officers. “You can leave.”
“Like I said, we’re searching the grounds.” The cocky one glares at me, and I imagine him decapitated and dismembered.
Tony crosses his arms and nonchalantly leans against the doorframe. “I’m certain you need a warrant to do that.”
“It wouldn’t take me long to get one.”
My friend gestures behind them, clicking his tongue like he would at a horse. “On you go, then. Don’t let the gate hit your ass on the way out.”
25
Sable
Ionce thought I’d die here. In the basement, hidden away—out of sight, out of mind. Never in all my years did I witness Mother or Father come down here. Now, with the moonlight streaming in through the narrow windows, I realize that’s why I always came down here.
Even with no reason to hide, something about this section of the manor feels more like home than anywhere else in the house.
I walk beside the wall, running my hand along the shelves, trying to remember what used to be on them.
Ah Ma gifted my father an antique Chinese ceramic vase from one of the dynasties. It used to sit on the very edge of the middle shelf with a cloth thrown over it. The staff knew to take it out and put it in the foyer every time she came to visit.
A hand-me-down wooden rocking horse used to rest on top of a desk once I graduated to riding real ones. Father hoped I might go pro.
Then there was the painting Grandma bought me for my fourteenth birthday that Mother didn’t let me hang up in my own room because I “didn’t deserve nice things,” though Ella was allowed to display whatever she wanted. It sat against this wall, shoved behind a couch that had been present ever since I first ventured down here.
I pause in front of an old workbench, rusted with age. Cracks decorate the wood. It can barely stand on its three and a half legs, one of its drawers tipped onto the floor.
It doesn’t look familiar. I wrack my brain, trying to remember what was in its place before the manor was raided. I think there was an easel here instead. This looks like something that would have been kept in the maintenance shed away from the property.
My skin tingles as I imbue strength into my hands to pull out the only drawer still inside it. It takes two tries before it gives way. Loose screws roll against a rusted set of pliers when I open it, then I huff in frustration when it catches a quarter way out.
I keep tugging on it, silently cursing whenever my hand slips through. Lowering myself to my knees, I angle my head to peer inside it so I can figure out what’s in the way. No amount of yanking makes it budge, so I make the split-second decision to act like a child.
I throw the entire table against the brick wall and exhale a sigh of relief when more cracks thunder through the wood.
It’s probably nothing, but with nothing to do every day, something mundane is better than even more nothingness.
I kick aside the splintered and broken pieces until I get to the drawer, which is now split in two. As always, it takes more pathetic tries than I’d like to get a decent enough grip to yank it out and find the culprit.
A black book tumbles out. I blink, expecting it to take a different shape. My money was on a screwdriver or something, not… this.
My lips pull into a thin line as I pick it up off the floor and bring it closer to the light. The pages of the worn leatherbound book are crinkled with age and use.
As I inhale, the book falls from my hands and lands right back where I got it from. Huffing, I set my ass on the dirty white cloths strewn around the room and flick the cover open.
My fingers stall over the ink scribbled onto the page. That’s my mother’s handwriting. I’d recognize her and Father’s scrawl anywhere. He’d always write at a thirty-degree angle that complemented her cursive script.
What is this book doing here? In a crappy desk not even the Feds bothered to take.
As I keep flipping through the book, something begins to form at the back of my mind. It starts as a quickly dismissed thought that slowly takes shape into something real. I recognize some of the names and companies listed in the book as ones the prosecutor mentioned in their hearing.
I flip from page to page, struggling to get my breathing under control. This ledger is filled with the dealings and names of what have to be shell companies, offshore accounts, and more things I don’t understand yet.
