Chapter 2 - The Woman in the Elevator
Beatrice could not move.
The woman inside the elevator was perhaps fifty, dressed in a dark navy coat, her gray-blonde hair pulled tightly behind her head.
She held the red handbag with both hands.
“Where is my mother?”
The woman stepped forward.
“Alive.”
Adrian positioned himself between them.
“Name.”
“Margaret Shaw.”
“I didn’t ask for an introduction.”
“I work for Eleanor Gallagher.”
Beatrice stared.
“My mother doesn’t have employees.”
Margaret looked at her.
“That is one of several things your mother never told you.”
Beatrice’s gaze returned to the dark stain on the handbag.
“Is that blood?”
“Mine.”
Margaret turned her wrist.
A shallow cut crossed her palm.
“I broke a window getting into your mother’s apartment.”
“Why?”
“Because two men got there first.”
Beatrice’s knees weakened.
Adrian caught her elbow.
“Where is Eleanor now?”
“Safe.”
“Where?”
Margaret looked at him.
“Not with you.”
Something dangerous passed through Adrian’s expression.
Beatrice pulled her arm free.
“Stop.”
Both of them looked at her.
“I don’t care who either of you think you are. That’s my mother. Tell me where she is.”
Margaret studied her for several seconds.
Then she reached into the handbag.
Adrian’s hand moved instantly.
Margaret stopped.
“Relax. It’s paper.”
She removed an envelope.
BEATRICE was written across the front in her mother’s handwriting.
Beatrice tore it open.
Inside was a photograph.
Her mother looked twenty-five years younger.
Beside her stood a handsome man Beatrice did not recognize.
On the other side stood Adrian’s father.
Beatrice had seen enough newspaper archives to know Vittorio Moretti.
She turned the photograph over.
Three words had been written on the back.
TRUST THE LEDGER.
“What ledger?” Beatrice whispered.
Margaret looked toward Adrian.
“That’s why people are suddenly interested in her.”
Adrian took the photograph.
His face hardened when he saw his father.
“My father knew Eleanor?”
“For years.”
Beatrice shook her head.
“My mother was a bookkeeper.”
Margaret almost smiled.
“She was one of the best forensic accountants in New York.”
The floor seemed to shift beneath Beatrice.
“That’s impossible.”
“No. It’s inconvenient.”
Margaret looked toward Charles, who remained several yards away near the ballroom doors.
“And tonight it became dangerous.”
Adrian made a call.
Within minutes, two members of his security team arrived.
Beatrice hated how easily everyone obeyed him.
She hated even more that she was relieved.
They left through a private exit.
Adrian’s car waited beneath the hotel.
Beatrice sat in the back beside Margaret while Adrian took the seat opposite them.
“Start talking,” Beatrice said.
Margaret did.
Twenty-six years earlier, Eleanor Gallagher had worked for a financial auditing company that handled accounts for several powerful New York families and businesses.
One client had been Vittorio Moretti.
Another had been the Wilkes family.
Eleanor discovered that money was disappearing through shell vendors.
She built a private ledger documenting every transfer.
Before she could expose it, her husband—Beatrice’s father, Patrick Gallagher—died in what police called an automobile accident.
Eleanor stopped asking questions.
She left the industry.
And she raised Beatrice alone.
“My father died because of accounting records?”
Margaret hesitated.
“We never proved that.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“People who tried to protect your mother.”
Adrian looked out the window.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
Adrian’s eyes closed briefly.
Beatrice watched him.
For the first time, she saw something beneath the reputation.
Grief.
Old grief.
“My father died five years ago,” Adrian said.
“I know.”
“Did he know the ledger still existed?”
Margaret nodded.
“Until his final day.”
The car became silent.
Beatrice thought of her mother making Sunday dinners.
Her mother clipping coupons.
Her mother complaining about cable bills.
Her mother had spent decades pretending to be ordinary.
“Where is she?”
Margaret gave an address in Brooklyn.
It was a private medical clinic.
Twenty minutes later, Beatrice ran through its side entrance.
“Mom!”
Eleanor Gallagher sat upright on an examination table.
She was sixty-eight, small, silver-haired, and furious.
“Beatrice, why are you dressed like a chandelier?”
Beatrice burst into tears.
She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around her.
“You didn’t answer.”
“My phone was taken.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not.”
“You could have told me!”
Eleanor went still.
Beatrice stepped back.
“All these years.”
“Bea—”
“My father. Moretti. Wilkes. The ledger.”
Eleanor looked toward Margaret.
“You told her.”
“I had to.”
“No. You chose to.”
“Mom!”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she looked older.
“I wanted you outside this.”
“You let me work for Wilkes.”
“I begged you not to take that job.”
“You said you didn’t like Midtown.”
“I couldn’t tell you why.”
Beatrice laughed bitterly.
“Apparently no one tells me anything.”
Adrian remained near the door.
Eleanor finally noticed him.
Her face changed.
“You look like Vittorio.”
“I hear that often.”
“He would hate that.”
Adrian almost smiled.
Then Eleanor saw the photograph in his hand.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your daughter.”
Eleanor looked at Beatrice.
“The ledger,” Beatrice said. “Where is it?”
“Gone.”
Margaret frowned.
“What?”
“I destroyed it.”
“When?”
“Twenty years ago.”
Margaret stared at her.
“You told me—”
“I lied.”
Adrian stepped forward.
“Then why is someone threatening Beatrice?”
Eleanor looked at her daughter.
“Because they don’t believe me.”
Beatrice sat beside her.
“Mom, I found nineteen transfers.”
Eleanor’s face went blank.
“Four point seven million dollars.”
Nothing.
“Authorization ending eighty-six.”
Eleanor stood so quickly the paper beneath her tore.
“Say that again.”
“Eighty-six.”
Eleanor looked at Adrian.
“Your father used eighty-six as a verification marker.”
“For what?”
“Records he believed had been altered.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“So someone recreated his system.”
“No.”
Eleanor shook her head.
“Someone found it.”
Beatrice felt a chill.
“Found what?”
“The second ledger.”
Margaret stared.
“You said there was only one.”
“There was.”
“Then what is the second ledger?”
Eleanor looked at Beatrice.
“The one your father made.”
Beatrice stopped breathing.
“My father was an electrician.”
“No.”
Eleanor’s voice cracked.
“He was my partner.”
The next hour dismantled almost everything Beatrice believed about her childhood.
Patrick Gallagher had not merely known about Eleanor’s investigation.
He had copied evidence.
When Eleanor became frightened, Patrick continued secretly.
After his death, Eleanor discovered that he had hidden fragments of the evidence using a numerical system.
But she never found all of it.
Beatrice stood by the clinic window.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wanted you to have a life.”
“You wanted me to have a lie.”
Eleanor flinched.
Beatrice regretted it immediately.
But she could not take it back.
Adrian approached quietly.
“Your mother made a choice under fear.”
Beatrice turned on him.
“Don’t defend secrets.”
His expression barely changed.
“Fair.”
She looked away.
“You called me your queen.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
A hint of embarrassment appeared in his face.
It was so unexpected she nearly forgot her anger.
“I needed everyone watching.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I heard what they said about you.”
“So?”
“So I disliked it.”
“You terrify half of Manhattan, and your solution to workplace bullying is royal vocabulary?”
Margaret coughed to hide a laugh.
Adrian ignored her.
“It worked.”
Beatrice stared at him.
Against every reasonable instinct, she laughed.
Just once.
Adrian smiled.
It transformed his entire face.
Then Eleanor interrupted.
“Beatrice.”
She held out the photograph.
“There’s something else.”
She pointed to her younger self.
Around Eleanor’s neck was a tiny brass key.
“I gave that key to you when you were nine.”
Beatrice frowned.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes.”
“I would remember.”
“You thought it belonged to your grandmother.”
Memory came slowly.
A small brass key.
A shoebox.
Childhood keepsakes.
Beatrice’s apartment.
“Oh my God.”
Adrian understood immediately.
“Where is it?”
“At home.”
They left ten minutes later.
Adrian insisted Eleanor remain under protection.
Beatrice protested until Eleanor herself ordered her to go.
“You found the numbers,” her mother said. “Finish what I was too afraid to finish.”
Adrian and Beatrice drove toward Queens.
Neither spoke for several minutes.
Then Adrian said, “You look beautiful in gold.”
Beatrice turned.
“Is this really the time?”
“No.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because everyone else made you believe the opposite.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“Thank you.”
Her apartment building appeared ahead.
The front door was open.
Beatrice’s stomach dropped.
She ran upstairs.
Her apartment door had been forced.
Drawers covered the floor.
Cushions had been cut open.
Books lay scattered everywhere.
She rushed to the bedroom closet.
The shoebox was gone.
“No.”
Adrian entered behind her.
“Beatrice.”
“They found it.”
“Maybe not.”
“They took the entire box.”
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
Adrian turned.
Someone ran.
His security team followed.
Beatrice stood amid the wreckage.
Then she noticed something beneath her overturned dresser.
A photograph from childhood.
She picked it up.
Her father held her on his shoulders.
On the back, in faded blue ink, he had written:
FOR BEA—WHEN NUMBERS STOP ADDING UP, LOOK WHERE MOM HIDES CHRISTMAS.
Beatrice stared at the message.
Her mother had never hidden Christmas gifts in their apartment.
She always hid them at one place.
Her late grandmother’s house.
That house had been empty for twelve years.
Beatrice grabbed her coat.
Then her phone vibrated.
A photograph appeared from the unknown number.
It showed Adrian standing behind her inside the apartment.
The picture had been taken seconds earlier.
From inside the room.
May you like
Beatrice slowly raised her eyes.
The closet door behind Adrian began to open.
