Chapter 7 - Papers In The Safe
The terrified lawyer didn't hesitate. Men like Arthur Sterling spent their entire lives building comfortable cages out of paperwork, and the moment real violence touched their skin, the cage collapsed into dust. He gasped for air, his hands clawing weakly at my wrists as he pointed a trembling finger toward a mahogany built-in bookcase set against the far wall of the suite.
"The wall safe," Arthur choked out, his voice cracking with humiliation and terror. "Behind the leather-bound volumes of maritime law. The combination is her birthday. July twelfth."
I didn't loosen my grip until I had shoved him hard enough to send him stumbling backward across the room, crashing against a glass-topped cocktail table that shattered under his weight. He hit the floor with a groan, clutching his ribs, but I paid him no mind. I crossed the room in three long strides, shoved the heavy law books aside, and exposed the circular steel dial of the wall safe.
My fingers spun the dial with mechanical precision, stopping at the numbers he had provided. With a heavy metallic click, the thick door swung open. Inside sat neatly stacked folders, notarized bank drafts, and a thick accordion file labeled with the name of the deceased woman who still haunted my quietest hours. I pulled the entire file out, flipped it open under the overhead light, and scanned the pages. There it was: the forged surrender of guardianship, signed with a dead woman's coerced signature, and alongside it, a secondary document detailing a wire transfer of five hundred thousand dollars routed to a shell account registered in the Cayman Islands.
Arthur had not just neglected a child; he had sold her birthright to the highest bidder in an effort to erase every legal tie she had to the estate.
I tucked the file securely beneath my arm, turning back toward the wreckage of the room. Arthur was still lying on the floor among the shards of glass and spilled whiskey, chest heaving, his face pale and slick with cold sweat.
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"If the police find these documents missing, they'll know it was you," he wheezed, wiping a streak of blood from his lip where he had bitten it during the fall. "They'll hunt you down across every state line."
"Let them try," I said, walking toward the double doors without looking back. "You've got bigger problems now, Arthur. You're going to spend the rest of your natural life explaining to a federal judge why you tried to sell a ghost's child."
