For the next ten minutes or so, Houdini and I work in relative silence, punctuated only by the soft clicking of the keyboard and almost inaudible snicks as Houdini spins the old-school dial on the safe. I’m not finding much so far, just folders filled with client data and spreadsheets of company expenses.
Then I move on to the hidden files—the files a lot of users don’t know about. But apparently, my father does. And as soon as I start scanning through the contents of them, I realize I’ve found what I was looking for.
There are financial records—account numbers, statements, and lists of cryptocurrency passwords—for over a dozen anonymous accounts. For each of them, there are regular deposits of tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes monthly, sometimes more often.
My fingers fly over the keyboard as I access each account and run reverse searches for each payment to find the payee. A shocking number of the names I find are well-known people from the New York City area, including politicians, attorneys, and CEOs. There’s no indication of what the payments are for, but the fact that they’re not included in the official company financials tells me there’s something off with them.
Next, I move on to the cryptocurrency records. And that’s where things get even darker.
My father hasn’t received payments via crypto. He’s only paid out. Three times, at thirty K each.
The first was the day Sofia was attacked in the alley.
The second was later that night.
And the third was the day before she was shot at outside Fox & Falcon.
It’s not proof that he tried to have her killed,that stubborn voice from my past insists.It could be coincidence.
But it isn’t, and I damn well know it.
Nausea rises, sending bile up my throat.
I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and flex my fingers, breathing through the anger until the urge to punch the computer monitor passes.
The fucking bastard.
Just as I’m about to dive into the files again, Houdini says, “Rogue. I think you need to see this.”
I glance over, surprised to find him looking into the safe. I hadn’t even noticed he’d gotten it open.
“What is it?” I ask as I get up from the desk and cross the room to the safe. “What did you find?”
Sympathy darkens his expression. “I think it’s better if you look for yourself.”
A terrible sense of foreboding settles over me.
Once I look inside, nothing will ever be the same.
Kneeling beside the safe, I peer into it. There are several stacks of paper inside, three burner phones, and over a dozen tiny cassettes I recognize as coming from an old-school micro-recorder.
“I looked through some of it,” Houdini says solemnly. “But I put it all back the way I found it. So you can see it just like I did.”
I don’t want to,the boy inside me pleads.He’s my father. He’s supposed to be a hero. Not a villain.
With growing horror, I look through the papers. I click the micro-cassettes into a recorder I find inside my father’s desk and listen to several of them. I scroll through the recent calls on the burner phones, searching for numbers I recognize.
And what I find is even worse than I could have imagined.
On the recordings are verbal deals going back decades—deals that not only involve my father installing custom security systems for hisspecialclients, but agreeing to bypass the security in order to allow entry at the locations in question. I listen to my father’s crackly but very recognizable voice assuring his clients that they’ll be able to get inside the building, that it’ll all be covered up, that he’ll make absolutely certain that the crime can’t be linked back to them.
The paperwork just adds to the horrifying reality. On each sheet of paper, one of my father’s deals is outlined in detail—the people involved, the location, time frame, and even the intended purpose.
As I sort through the records, I cross check some of the details on my phone, finding reports of crimes that match. Kidnappings. Burglaries. Assaults. Even murder.
Everything I’m finding paints a horrifying picture.
Yes, my father’s company has an above-board, legal side to it. But there’s another part, a dark and sinister part, that enables people with money to commit crimes without fear of repercussions.
