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Step three done.
I take a deep breath and try to force my fingers to stop shaking. I stuff the keys into my pocket.
The soles of my boots squeak as I progress from the side entry to my father’s office deeper into the room. I drip all over the Calamander hardwood flooring that dates back to before it went extinct. It came with the mansion and was the selling point for my father. Back when he would do anything to please me.
But I’m not focused on priceless flooring or the still night around me.
My chest grows tight. I don’t need the light to see Hark’s body on the floor. My mind conjures up the image just fine in the darkness. My heart rate spikes and heat needles into my cold fingers. I swallow back the paralyzing memories. I grip the back of one of the chairs in front of my father’s desk, my fingers trembling. I did everything in my power never to step foot in here since that night because I knew how my heart and body would react.
I was not wrong.
I close my eyes and allow myself to remember the truth. Hark isn’t dead. My daughter is alive. And she needs me to finish this. We both do. And so does Hark. The Druid is out there now planning on a way to take him down without getting killed by the Savages. I know him well enough to take this as fact without seeing the evidence.
Rooted in reality and putting my heart back in my chest, I push forward. My father’s large wooden desk takes up the far side of the office. I walk around it to the large wooden bookcase that is as wide as it is tall. Priceless tomes fill the shelves but I am not here for black market editions with titles I can’t pronounce worth twelve million dollars and more.
I’m here for the key to the kingdom. Documents to prove I have the right to the Titan fortune.
I don’t want to risk turning on a light just in case I’m wrong about being alone. But I need something to see. I grab the lamp off the desk and place it where the glow is minimal. With it set to its lowest, I open the cupboard door sealing in my father’s home safe. In it I know for a fact is his true final Will and Testament.
Now for step four.
Two things have me worried: Fingers crossed the combination is still the same and he didn’t change it out since our falling out. And second, I’m still on the thing. Otherwise, all this is for naught.
I take a deep breath and punch in my mother’s birth date, God rest her soul, and the last two digits of mine.
When the door gives, I swing it open and my heart starts beating again right along with the airflow to my lungs.
That’s one worry gone.
Inside are two shelves. On the top shelf are five large bundles of cash. I take those out to find my passport and his. I take both.
On the bottom shelf is a large stack of papers with a black Glock and an extra clip serving as a paperweight.
My old self wouldn’t pay it any attention. Armed with my neweveryone can kiss my assattitude and an evil husband out to kill me I pick it up and do my best to check to see if it is loaded. I don’t have a lot of experience with weapons, but that needs to change real quick. At least I find the safety switch.
I go back in for the papers and nearly laugh when I find the authentic Will and Testament. My father never was one to leave it all in the hands of a lawyer. He wanted one hundred percent control over everything. I guess that is why he never changed the code to the safe either. It was the night before my fifteenth birthday when he told me about it and the will. All these years later nothing changed.
So far.
I flip through the six pages to find my name as the sole beneficiary of everything—the high-end hotels, the chain of five-star restaurants. Everything is mine. Including access to the substantial wealth those enterprises provide.
“Thank God.”
Relief fills me but I can’t relax yet.
But what about the ones no one knows about? I go back in to find a burner phone and two ledgers. One is leather-bound and I know it’s for the names of those who owe my father debts. The other I don’t recognize.
I push the phone into my back pocket and turn the book over in my hands. It’s black with about three hundred pages worth of numbers. It’s how he kept track of the “other” side of his business I see. But it’s only one loose sheet of paper tucked about halfway in the book that has my full attention.
I pull it out. In stark black ink, every single bank account under every shell corporation my father ever created is detailed for me. Bank names and access codes are literally at my fingertips.
I shift and from inside the large leger falls another set of papers. These are folded in three with deep creases. Leaning under the lamp I unfold them to find another set of numbers. But these make no sense to me. Nor does seeing the Volkovs’ name. “What the hell were you into, Father?”
I cast about for some form of bag to carry everything. Not finding anything, I dump the trash can and use it as a carry-all—The ledgers, the money, the passports. It all goes in. I take the Will and Testament, bank information, and the Volkov papers and tuck those under my shirt and into the band of my jeans to secure them.
I knew about the laundering for the mafia, but seeing the two dead brothers’ names sends dread through me.
Bright light fills the room and I’m jerked out of my thoughts. I instantly freeze. Tucked behind this mammoth of a desk, maybe whoever walked into the room doesn’t know I’m here. I remain still.
