Chương 5 - The Dead Man’s Ledger
Evan wanted Clare to come alone.
She refused.
That decision irritated him enough to expose his first mistake.
He sent another message.
Then your father’s truth disappears forever.
Clare showed Detective Torres.
Torres smiled without humor.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“He’s scared. Scared people rush.”
Luca stood across the conference table.
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“I can know in twenty minutes.”
Torres pointed at him.
“No.”
“I meant through telecommunications metadata.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
Clare almost smiled despite herself.
The plan was simple.
Clare would continue messaging Evan while police traced whatever they legally could. Luca would stay away.
He hated the last part.
“You’re not bait,” he told Clare.
“I know.”
“Then don’t behave like it.”
“You don’t get to decide.”
“I know that too.”
Their eyes met.
Something had changed between them since the revelation about Thomas Bennett.
Trust had cracked.
But strangely, honesty had entered through the fracture.
Luca no longer pretended he was merely her employer.
Clare no longer pretended his presence meant nothing to her.
Neither was ready to examine what remained.
Evan eventually instructed Clare to meet him inside an abandoned restaurant near the East River.
Torres refused.
Instead, detectives surrounded the location and sent an undercover officer.
Evan never arrived.
At 9:12 p.m., Clare received a video.
Evan sat inside a dark room with the ledger open before him.
“You always underestimated me, Clare.”
She watched from the police command van.
His face looked thinner.
Less polished.
“I loved you,” Evan continued. “Maybe that’s the funniest part. At first, you were access. Then you became real.”
Clare closed her eyes.
Luca watched her from across the van but said nothing.
Evan held up several pages.
“Thomas Bennett found evidence connecting Vittorio Duca’s company to illegal payments. But Vittorio wasn’t the only name.”
He turned a page toward the camera.
Another surname appeared repeatedly.
MERCER.
Clare leaned forward.
Evan continued.
“My grandfather, Charles Mercer, financed half those projects.”
Detective Torres swore softly.
“My family spent twenty years burying what happened. Then you went to work for Luca Duca.”
Clare whispered, “That’s why he approached me.”
The video continued.
“I was supposed to find out what you knew. What Luca knew. Whether Vittorio left records.”
Evan’s face changed.
“For the record, I never planned to fall in love with you.”
Clare laughed once, painfully.
“What a romantic.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“But when Luca announced the terminal acquisition,” Evan continued, “everything changed. My firm needed information. I needed the ledger. And you were standing between both.”
He looked directly into the camera.
“I’m sorry about your wrist.”
Clare went rigid.
“I lost control.”
Luca stood.
Clare caught his sleeve.
One touch.
He stopped.
On-screen, Evan closed the ledger.
“There’s one page Luca has never seen. The page his father removed before hiding this book.”
The video ended.
Torres immediately asked technicians to trace it.
Clare looked at Luca.
“A missing page?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You believe him?”
“I believe liars sometimes use truth because it makes the lie harder to find.”
An hour later, investigators located the upload source.
A hotel in Queens.
Police entered the room.
Empty.
But Evan had left something behind.
A photocopy.
The document was twenty years old.
It described payments made to a city official days before Thomas Bennett’s death.
The recipient was identified only by initials.
R.M.
Clare knew those initials.
Richard Mercer.
Evan’s father.
The current chairman of Mercer Capital.
The man who had welcomed Clare into his family.
The man who had toasted her engagement.
The man who had once told her Thomas Bennett would have been proud to see his daughter marrying a Mercer.
Clare became physically sick.
Luca followed her outside the command room.
She stood against the hallway wall, breathing hard.
“I ate Christmas dinner with him.”
Luca stayed several feet away.
“He knew who I was.”
“Yes.”
“He knew what happened to my father.”
“Possibly.”
“He hugged my mother.”
Her voice broke.
Luca took one step forward.
Then stopped.
“Can I?”
She understood the question.
Not Can I fix this?
Not Can I kill the man responsible?
Simply:
Can I touch you?
Clare nodded.
Luca wrapped his arms around her.
For several seconds she remained rigid.
Then something inside her gave way.
She pressed her face against his chest and cried.
He said nothing.
No promises.
No threats.
No declarations.
Just stayed.
When she finally pulled away, she looked embarrassed.
“Your suit is wet.”
“I own others.”
She laughed through tears.
Then Detective Torres opened the door.
“We found Evan.”
Clare turned.
“Where?”
“He walked into the Twenty-First Precinct.”
“What?”
“He’s surrendering.”
Luca frowned.
Torres’s expression suggested there was more.
“He says he’ll hand over the original ledger and testify against his father.”
Clare stared at her.
“Why?”
“He has one condition.”
“What?”
May you like
Torres looked from Clare to Luca.
“He says Luca Duca has to tell Clare what really happened the night Thomas Bennett died.”
