Page 130 of Brutal Truths

Birds of America. Oliver Twist. I used to beg him to read that one to me.

The Prince. Paradise Lost. The Great Gatsby, second edition. Fanny Hill. That was a gift from my grandmother, earning her one of his famous eye rolls. Erotic romance wasn’t his thing.

Fahrenheit 451. Lord of the Flies. Animal Farm. Dracula, first edition. The Hobbit. The Canterbury Tales, fourth edition. The Grapes of Wrath. The Bell Jar.

I stop. Something’s not sitting right.

Another copy of The Canterbury Tales.

That shouldn’t be there. My grandfather didn’t keep duplicates. One edition was enough, no matter how rare. He’d always said there was no point in owning the same book twice.

Which means this doesn’t belong.

It’s just out of reach, too high for me to grab without standing on something. So I do what I’ve done more than once, and what used to get me in trouble every time he caught me.

“Sorry, Gramps, but this is important,” I apologize as I climb the shelves, balancing carefully until I’m high enough to reach it. The moment I touch the book, I know.

“Good move, old man,” I whisper, a hint of admiration slipping through. “No one would ever suspect one of these old editions to be hollowed out and made into a camera. You sure fooled the hell out of me.”

Because I don’t want to mess something up, I let it go. This is Aiden’s area. He’ll know what to do. There’s probably a backup system hidden in here as well.

I step down and slip—exactly what my grandfather warned me would happen when I climbed furniture. I land on my arse, barely missing the edge of the desk with my head.

A huff leaves me, followed by a short burst of laughter as I collapse onto my back. It dries up quickly. My attention drawn to the black box mounted underneath, just behind a drawer that’s shorter than the others.

“Well, fuck me,” I mumble to myself.

It’s small, with a lock that requires a code, the same as the wall safe. One I’m ninety percent sure I don’t have.

“When he hid this here, he had to know eventually we’d find it. That we’d need to get inside,” I say under my breath, piecing things together.

My grandfather loved mind games. He used to leave me coded messages, expecting me to work them out on my own. No hints. No help.

When I didn’t, that was it. No reward. He made sure I understood early on that if I wanted answers, I had to earn them.

“So… now what? How am I supposed to solve this? Would be easier if you’d left me one of those coded messages now, Gramps.”

I started with the obvious, entering the code from the safe. Nothing. Not surprised. My grandfather wasn’t careless enough to make it that easy.

I move through the next options—birthdays, important dates, anything that held some sort of meaning.

Nothing.

“Seriously, why did you make this so damn hard?” I grumble and slap the floor with my palm. “You could’ve just written it down in that damn letter you left me.”

I close my eyes. The words from his letter playing in my head. One part never made sense to me. The ending about the physician and the year holding the key.

“Why the riddles?” I rub my forehead and try to make sense of a man who never did anything the easy way.

Frustration wins out, and I slide out from under the desk, already accepting defeat. Maybe this is one I’m not meant to solve. Aiden’s tech friend Pauly will have to crack it.

But then my eyes land on the book I bought him. The answer hits me all at once. I smack my palm against my forehead and crawl back under the desk and type in the code: 1387. The year the book was first published.

Nothing happens. Either I’m wrong or the code isn’t long enough.

My grandfather’s voice echoes in my head, reminding me how important it was to make passwords difficult—long enough that no one could guess them by accident.

A smile pulls at my lips as the answer comes to me. Another game we played was knowing that each number was assigned letters, just like on a phone. I’d memorized those years ago, so it makes the next code I enter easier—physician1387.