Chapter 6 - BOX 711
I went to the bank the next morning with an attorney named Sarah Kent.
Not Larkin.
Not Mason.
Not anyone tied to Steves.
Sarah specialized in white-collar investigations and looked at me as though my life decisions offended her professionally.
Good.
Box 711 required two keys.
Mine.
Bank’s.
Inside:
One black notebook.
Three flash drives.
A sealed letter.
And a photograph.
My father.
My mother.
Larkin’s father, Stephen.
Roman Bellini.
And one woman I did not know.
Sarah photographed everything before touching it.
Then I opened the letter.
Penny,
My father called me Penny.
No one else did.
If you are reading this, I failed to clean up something I helped create.
My chest tightened.
Not something I discovered.
Something I helped create.
Joseph explained.
Twenty years earlier, he worked as a forensic accountant for legitimate companies that quietly serviced criminal organizations.
He told himself numbers were neutral.
Money was money.
Then Stephen Steves hired him to design structures shielding legal businesses from illegal revenue.
My father did it.
For years.
WDS was one of those structures.
My mother’s name was used as nominee owner with her knowledge.
I sat back.
Mom knew.
She did not participate in operations.
But she knew.
The ordinary family I remembered had existed beside another reality.
Then:
When Margaret became pregnant with you, she wanted out. So did I.
Stephen refused.
Joseph began copying records.
Not for money.
For leverage.
Enough to leave safely.
Then Bellini discovered him.
Threats started.
My father contacted federal investigators.
Before he could deliver everything, someone inside the Steves organization issued an order using young Larkin’s forged signature.
There.
Larkin had told the truth.
At least about that.
Then my father wrote:
Larkin did not order my death.
I exhaled.
But the next line:
His father did not either.
My skin went cold.
Then who?
Joseph believed the forged order came from someone trying to trigger war between Steves and Bellini if the murder was exposed.
The person needed access to Larkin’s signature.
Internal operations.
Family access.
Then my father wrote a name:
ANTHONY STEVES.
Thomas’s father.
Larkin’s uncle.
Dead four years.
Sarah and I looked at each other.
Thomas’s father had ordered my father killed.
Maybe.
Evidence next.
Flash drive one:
Signature templates.
Anthony’s emails.
Operational instructions.
Payment.
Enough to strongly support it.
Then flash drive two:
WDS ownership and accounts.
Money controlled by Anthony.
After his death, control transferred automatically to—
Thomas.
There it was.
Thomas inherited the secret system.
Nine million stolen over eighteen months.
Probably more.
Then the photograph.
Unknown woman identified on the back:
EVELYN STEVES.
Larkin’s mother.
I had never heard about her.
Officially, Larkin’s mother died when he was a child.
The photograph date:
Five years after her supposed death.
Another false family story.
Then Sarah said:
“There’s a third drive.”
We opened it.
One video.
My father speaking directly to camera.
“If Penelope sees this, tell Larkin his mother is alive.”
May you like
I stopped breathing.
“And tell him Thomas knows where she is.”
