Chapter 7 - The Ledger Beneath the Floor
The next morning, the hospital released no information about Emmett's condition.
At his request, only Mercer, Gabriel, Maeve, and Detective Vasquez were authorized to receive updates.
The Castellano family was told nothing.
That decision infuriated Warren.
By nine o'clock, he had sent three attorneys to the hospital.
By ten, he had threatened litigation.
By eleven, he'd appeared on local television expressing concern for his nephew's health.
Maeve watched the interview on a small screen in the waiting room.
Warren wore a black overcoat and spoke softly.
“Our family is praying for Emmett's recovery. We only want what's best for him.”
Maeve turned off the television.
“He's a monster.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Yes.”
Emmett, who had been transferred from intensive monitoring to a private room after improvement, was reviewing financial records when Maeve entered.
He looked up.
“Any news?”
“Not yet.”
He studied her exhausted face.
“You haven't slept.”
“Neither have you.”
“I've slept enough for eight months.”
She almost smiled.
Then remembered Danny.
Her expression collapsed.
Emmett closed the folder.
“Come here.”
Maeve hesitated.
He gestured toward the chair beside his bed.
She sat.
“I need you to understand something,” he said.
“What?”
“If Warren harmed your family because of me—”
“Don't.”
“I owe you—”
“No.”
Her voice was sharp.
“You don't get to turn this into another debt.”
Emmett stopped.
Maeve wiped her eyes.
“I don't need your money. I don't need a promise that you'll punish someone. I need Danny to come home. I need my mother safe. And I need the truth.”
Emmett nodded slowly.
“Then that's what we'll pursue.”
A knock interrupted them.
Detective Vasquez entered.
“We found your mother.”
Maeve stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor.
“Where?”
“A roadside motel outside Lynn. She's being examined at the hospital.”
“Is she okay?”
“She's frightened and dehydrated, but there's no obvious serious injury.”
Maeve began crying.
Vasquez continued.
“She gave us a description of the man who took her.”
“Who?”
“Corbin Pike.”
Emmett's face hardened.
His night attendant.
The man who had stood beside his bed while his condition deteriorated.
The man who had watched him suffer.
Maeve covered her mouth.
“Did he say anything?”
Vasquez nodded.
“Your mother remembers him asking about a toolbox.”
Maeve looked up.
“The toolbox.”
Vasquez continued.
“He searched your apartment but apparently didn't find it.”
Maeve frowned.
“It was there. Under Mom's bed.”
“Not when officers arrived.”
Maeve thought back.
Her mother had become increasingly forgetful over the years.
Sometimes she hid important things in strange places.
Money inside cereal boxes.
Keys beneath pillows.
Photographs in the refrigerator.
Then Maeve remembered something.
Three weeks earlier, Colleen had insisted they visit Brendan's grave.
She'd carried a small cloth bag.
And she'd refused to let Maeve touch it.
“Mom moved it,” Maeve whispered.
Vasquez looked at her.
“What?”
“The toolbox. She moved it.”
“Where?”
Maeve closed her eyes.
She remembered her mother's words at the cemetery.
Your father liked things where nobody would look.
Then another memory surfaced.
Her father had built a small wooden storage compartment beneath the porch of their old family home in Chelsea.
The house had been sold years earlier.
But the compartment had never appeared on any building plan.
Maeve opened her eyes.
“I know where to look.”
By late afternoon, detectives obtained permission from the current homeowners to inspect the property.
Maeve waited outside with Gabriel.
The house looked smaller than she remembered.
The porch paint was peeling.
The maple tree her father had planted still stood beside the driveway.
She touched its bark.
For a moment, she was fourteen again.
Waiting for a man who would never come home.
A detective emerged carrying a rusted metal toolbox.
Maeve's breath caught.
They opened it in a controlled evidence area.
Inside were old photographs.
A firefighter's badge.
A child's bracelet.
And a sealed plastic pouch containing a small external storage drive and a handwritten ledger.
Mercer examined the photographed pages later at the hospital.
The ledger recorded years of suspicious cargo movements and insurance payments.
Several entries corresponded to the warehouse fire.
Others showed transfers into shell companies controlled by Warren.
Then Mercer found something unexpected.
A payment made eleven years earlier.
The same week Eleanor Castellano died.
The recipient was Dr. Vernon Ashford.
Emmett stared at the screen.
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
“For what?”
Mercer shook his head.
“No description.”
Maeve felt cold.
Eleanor's death.
Arthur Bell's death.
Emmett's poisoning.
All connected to the same physician.
But the ledger contained one final entry that frightened Mercer more than the others.
It was written in Brendan Sullivan's handwriting.
E.C. knows. If anything happens to me, find the second ledger.
Emmett frowned.
“E.C.?”
Maeve looked at him.
“Eleanor Castellano?”
He shook his head slowly.
“My mother didn't keep a second ledger.”
“Then who did?”
A voice answered from the doorway.
“I did.”
Everyone turned.
A woman stood there wearing a cream-colored coat.
Dark hair framed her pale face.
Her eyes were identical to Emmett's.
May you like
Isabella Castellano had finally come home.
And in her arms, fast asleep, was Danny Sullivan.
