Chapter 46
Elise's POV:
I didn't turn on the lights.
The room was small, with sheer floral curtains that did nothing to block the streetlights outside. A narrow strip of light slanted in through the gap in the window, falling across the floor — just enough for me to make out the foot of the bed and the shape of the wardrobe.
I'd been lying there for over three hours. Not asleep.
Not because I wasn't tired. But because I couldn't afford to sleep tonight.
I had noticed something at dinner.
When Benjamin came out of the study to take a phone call — that dark grey polo shirt and trousers, he'd taken off the trousers and draped them over the drying rack on the balcony.
The trouser pocket was bulging.
There was a set of keys inside.
The study keys.
The only locked room in this house. From the very first day I moved in at fourteen, I had never once been allowed inside. I asked once when I was younger — "Uncle Benjamin, what's in the study?" — and the answer I got was "Children shouldn't go touching things that belong to adults," delivered with a look that sent a chill down my spine.
After that, I stopped asking.
But I knew there was something in there.
Every time Benjamin finished dealing with some "important matter," he would go into that room. Sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for hours. Occasionally, late at night, I could hear the sound of phone calls coming from inside — hushed, urgent, a voice completely unlike the one he used in the daytime.
Margaret never asked questions. Anna was never curious.
Only I had always wanted to know what was hidden in there.
And now — the keys were sitting on the drying rack on the balcony. Benjamin and Margaret's bedroom door was closed, the sound of the television leaking through the gap — probably some evening news programme. Anna's room had gone quiet long ago.
The whole house was in sleep mode.
I got out of bed barefoot.
The floor was cold. The old wooden floorboards let out the faintest creak underfoot — I kept every step as quiet as possible, moving like a cat through the dark.
I paused at the balcony door.
Pushed it open. The night breeze hit my face, carrying the particular smell of the city at its depths: exhaust fumes, factory smoke from somewhere far off, the scent of plants from someone's balcony nearby.
The drying rack was in the corner of the balcony. A few items hung there — one of Margaret's jackets, two pairs of jeans, and Benjamin's grey polo trousers.
My fingers slid into his pocket.
The faint sound of metal on metal. A set of keys. Two of them. One large, one small.
The large one looked like a door lock key. The small one looked like it belonged to a filing cabinet or a drawer.
I closed my hand around them and stepped back inside, my heartbeat a little faster than before.
---
The hallway was short. Five steps end to end. Benjamin and Margaret's bedroom on the left, Anna's room on the right, and straight ahead — the study door.
It was wooden. An old solid-wood panel, painted a deep brown, worn and chipped at the edges. The handle was brass-coloured, darkened with oxidation, cold and slightly rough to the touch.
The sound of the key sliding into the lock was startlingly loud in the silence.
Click.
I held my breath.
Turned it. Another click. The door opened.
---
The study was smaller than I'd imagined.
A battered desk sat against the window — the surface piled with scattered documents, a few empty ashtrays, an old desk lamp coated in dust. Beside the desk stood a metal filing cabinet, its green paint knocked off in so many places that the rusted metal underneath showed through. In the corner sat an old laptop, lid closed, covered in a thin layer of dust.
The air smelled of stale tobacco, mixed with the musty odour of damp paper, and something else I couldn't quite name — like something had been rotting but never quite finished the process.
I didn't turn on the desk lamp. The streetlight outside wasn't enough to illuminate the whole room, but I didn't need it to.
I knew what I was looking for.
I crouched down and opened the first drawer of the filing cabinet.
Odds and ends. Old newspapers, expired insurance documents, a few yellowed notebooks — I flipped through one: Benjamin's early work records, nothing to do with the inheritance. Closed it.
Second drawer.
Bills. Old receipts for water, electricity, building maintenance. A few supermarket slips. An address book. Closed it.
Third drawer.
My hand froze in mid-air.
Because at the very back of this drawer, pressed beneath a pile of old newspapers and an empty tea tin, was a kraft paper envelope.
The flap had been sealed with wax. And then opened — the wax had been cut through with a blade, leaving ragged edges.
I pulled it out.
Inside was a stack of printed pages. A4 size. Dense with numbers and tables.
I tipped the envelope over and let the papers slide into my palm.
By the faint light filtering in from outside, I began to read.
The first thing I saw was the total.
Original trust account balance: USD 47,200,000.
That was the figure Julian had told me. The full sum of everything my parents had left behind — property, investments, insurance payouts, the liquidated value of their share in the law firm — converted and tallied.
Then my eyes moved to the next column.
Amount transferred out: USD 37,800,000.
Thirty-seven point eight million.
I stared at that number for three full seconds, convinced I'd misread it.
I read it again.
No. Thirty-seven point eight million.
Eighty-one percent of the total.
Not the two-thirds Julian had mentioned — nearly eighty percent of the inheritance had been moved out.
My hands were shaking. From rage.
The kind of rage that starts burning in your stomach and works its way upward, threatening to reduce everything inside you to ash.
This money — the money my parents had spent their entire lives working to save — had been siphoned off by two people I was supposed to be able to trust, flowing straight into their own pockets as easily as water from a tap. And all the while, Margaret in her silk blouse and pearl necklace had accused me of "freeloading." Benjamin, driving that second-hand Audi he'd gotten from God knows where, had threatened and violated me, photographed me in private moments and used the images as leverage.
Eighty-one percent.
I took a slow, deep breath. Slid the documents back into the envelope and returned it to where I'd found it. Closed the third drawer.
It wasn't enough. The transfer records were only part of the evidence. I needed more.