Chapter 5 - WHAT DANIEL KNEW
Mom sat down on a box of napkins.
She read the sentence three times.
Then four.
I climbed onto her lap.
“Is that Daddy’s writing?”
She nodded.
Her eyes were wet.
“Yes.”
I remembered almost nothing about my father.
A warm sweater.
A song he used to hum while washing dishes.
A picture of him holding me when I was a baby.
And Mom saying he had been a good man.
She never said much about how he died.
Only that there had been a car accident on a rainy night.
Vincent crouched in front of Mom.
“Claire.”
She looked at him.
“Did Daniel ever mention David’s books?”
“No.”
“Missing money?”
“No.”
“Threats?”
Mom shook her head.
Then she stopped.
Her expression changed.
“One night.”
David shifted near the stairs.
Mom looked at him.
“About two weeks before the accident.”
She swallowed.
“Daniel came home late.”
“He locked the door.”
“He checked the windows.”
“He said if anybody from the restaurant called, I should tell them he wasn’t home.”
Vincent asked.
“Did he say why?”
“He said he had made a mistake trusting somebody.”
David interrupted.
“This is ridiculous.”
Mom stood.
“You lied to me.”
“Claire.”
“You came to the funeral.”
David’s face tightened.
“You hugged me.”
She stared at him as if seeing him for the first time.
“You told me Daniel had been distracted lately.”
David looked toward Crowe.
His attorney said nothing.
Mom’s voice grew colder.
“Were you talking about these records?”
David shook his head.
“I don’t know anything about an envelope.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Vincent looked toward Elena.
“Can you find Daniel’s old payroll access?”
“I can try.”
She took one of the ledgers upstairs.
Vincent’s men searched nothing.
Touched nothing.
They simply watched the doors while Elena documented what Walter had voluntarily opened.
Even at four and a half, I noticed that.
Vincent Kane had a reputation for breaking rules.
But that afternoon, he seemed determined to make sure David could not later claim anyone else had.
Twenty minutes later, Elena called us upstairs.
She had found an archived account.
Daniel Carter had logged into the payroll system at 11:43 p.m. two nights before he died.
He downloaded four files.
One was missing.
Three still existed.
Employee hours.
Vendor payments.
Executive transfers.
Elena opened the executive-transfer file.
David’s name appeared over and over.
But another name appeared beside his.
MASON REED.
Vincent stopped moving.
One of his bodyguards looked down.
Mom noticed.
“Who is Mason Reed?”
Vincent didn’t answer immediately.
Then he looked toward the back corner of the restaurant.
The chair beside his usual seat was empty.
“He works for me.”
A cold silence spread across the room.
David smiled for the first time in an hour.
And that frightened me more than anything.
May you like
Because whatever Daniel had discovered years earlier did not end with David Sterling.
It reached all the way to Vincent Kane’s table.
