Chapter 119 The Red Room

Chapter 119 The Red Room
“How did you–” I start.
“I had my suspicions the moment I saw the messenger at the docks,” Dad interrupts quietly. “Adrian always had a sick flair for theatrical cruelty. It was his signature punishment for snitches, back when we still ran operations together. Nobody else I ever worked with had the stomach or the specific creativity for it.” He pauses. “The tapes confirmed it. Nobody was ever close enough to me during those missions to capture footage like that except him. I just… just didn’t want to believe it was true.”
Never in all my eighteen years on this earth have I seen heard my Dad hesitate or even stammer slightly.
“I assume he wanted something,” David says, looking directly at Eli now.
Eli hesitates slightly before answering. “He’s asking for a ledger.”
My father stiffens so violently his shoulders pull tight against the fabric of his suit jacket. I catch the shift in an instant.
“What’s in the ledger, Dad?” I ask, stepping closer. “What could possibly be in a physical notebook that has you reacting like that?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” he says simply, going back to the documents on his desk.
“He told me it has enough evidence to take you down permanently,” Eli interjects.
Dad actually scoffs at that. “The only thing that ledger could ever do for Adrian is hand him the power he’s spent his entire life desperate for.”
I open my mouth to push further, but Dad raises a single, uncompromising hand.
“That is all,” Dad says flatly, closing the door on any further conversation. “It’s really late. You both go get some rest.”
Eli glances at me, offering a subtle nod that tells me pushing right now will get us nowhere. I drag a breath into my lungs, turn on my heel, and we walk out into the quiet corridor.
Eli walks me back down the corridor toward my bedroom. The air between us is humming with the weight of everything we just uncovered, but neither of us speaks until we are back inside my room.
“He’s hiding something,” I say, turning to face Eli the second the door latches shut. “My father doesn’t sweat over money or federal tax fraud. He has three legal teams on retainer to handle that.”
“I know,” Eli says softly, leaning back against the closed door, his dark eyes watching me closely. “Whatever is in that book, it’s huge.”
“Get some rest,” I tell him, stepping closer and placing a warm hand against his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart through his damp jacket. “We aren’t finding answers in this hallway tonight.”
He looks at me for a long moment, his hand coming up to gently cover mine before he presses a quick, warm kiss to my temple. “Call me if you hear anything.”
Later that night, unable to sleep, I head downstairs for water and hear my parents’ voices coming from the sitting room, low and urgent in a way that stops me at the bottom of the stairs.
I ease closer, staying just out of sight near the doorway.
“I gave it to Selene to hide,” my mother’s voice comes through. “When things started getting unstable between you and Adrian, I suspected he’d pull something like this so I took it out of this house particularly so that anyone who searches wouldn’t find it.”
A pause follows. The sound of ice clinking against a crystal tumbler fills the silence.
“Selene?” Dad asks.
“Yes,” Mom replies softly. “I trusted her with it.”
Another long, agonizing silence stretches out. I can picture my father standing by the fireplace with his eyes fixed on the floorboards as he processes the name of my mother’s closest friend and sister-figure.
“If it’s with Selene,” Dad says finally, “there is only one place she could have hidden it.”
“The Red Room,” my mother completes.
I freeze completely, my hand still resting on the wall, my mind racing through every memory I have of Selene, every conversation, every offhand comment, searching for anything that might attach itself to those two words.
Nothing comes up. I have absolutely no idea what the Red Room is, but something about the way both my parents say it tells me it belongs to a version of their lives I’ve never been allowed access to.
I don’t stay to hear the rest of their conversation. If my father catches me listening at the door now, he will lock down the estate and put two armed guards outside my bedroom. I slide backward into the darkness of the hallway, stepping silently until I reach the stairs, then sprint up to my room on quiet feet.
I grab my phone and hit the speed dial for Aunt Sel.
It is three o’clock in the morning, but Selene isn’t the kind of woman who sleeps early.
“Lucia?” Selene’s voice comes through the speaker. “Is everything alright, darling?”
“Everything is fine, Aunt Sel,” I say, slumping back into my chair and letting my tone drop into a casual, slightly tired purr. “Just missed you. Been a weird few weeks.”
“I’ve heard,” she says, something careful entering her voice now. “Your mother’s kept me updated. I’m so sorry about Zeke, sweetheart, I should have called sooner.”
“It’s okay,” I say, refusing to let my mind linger on his name. “Um… I was going through some old family property records from the early two-thousands, looking for an old deed Dad mentioned, and I came across a reference I didn’t recognize.”
“Oh? What reference?”
“Something called the Red Room,” I say smoothly, keeping my voice light.
The pause on the other end is barely half a second, but I catch it anyway.
“The what?”
“The Red Room,” I say again. “I overheard Mom and Dad mention it earlier. Sounded important.”
“Oh, that,” she says, and her laugh comes a second too late. “It’s old business thing, darling, nothing interesting. Boring adult logistics. You know how your parents get about their old ventures.”
“Right,” I say slowly.
“Anyway,” she continues, already steering us elsewhere, “how’s school going? Your father mentioned you’re back in person now.”
I let her change the subject, answer a few questions about classes I don’t actually care about right now, and hang up a few minutes later with a polite goodnight, my mind already working long before the call fully ends.
I set the phone down slowly on the desk. She lied.
I know that evasiveness. I’ve deployed it myself more times than I can count. That specific, practiced lightness people use when they’re redirecting.
I sit with my laptop that night, running the name through every database I can access, cross referencing old property records, business filings, anything with a paper trail attached to those two words.
It takes almost an hour before something surfaces.
The Red Room is a private, high-end membership venue located in the lower basement level of an old industrial building downtown.
A BDSM club.
I scroll down the historical operations permit, my eyes scanning the listed staff registry, venue layout, and founding ownership details.
My breath stops completely.
Because listed right beneath Selene’s name on the original founding entertainment license, recorded as a primary managing partner before she married my father, is my mother’s name.
Nora Ellis.
My mother worked there.