Chapter 47
Elise's POV
The fourth drawer contained bank receipts and transfer vouchers. The dates spanned five years, the earliest tracing back to the year I first moved into this house. Each transaction bore Benjamin's or Margaret's signature—sometimes his alone, sometimes hers as proxy. The recipients varied wildly: companies whose names I didn't recognize, what appeared to be individual account holders, and some entries marked only with abbreviations and reference numbers.
I photographed them with my phone. Flash off, silent mode activated. One by one, carefully aligning each page in the frame.
Halfway through, my fingers brushed against something at the very bottom of the filing cabinet.
Hard. Thin. Like a small booklet or journal.
I pulled it out.
Black cover. No text. Palm-sized. The corners were heavily worn, as if frequently thumbed through and carelessly tossed aside.
I opened to the first page.
I froze.
This wasn't any estate-related document.
This was a ledger.
But it wasn't recording estate transactions.
The first line showed a date: March 12, 2019.
Below that, an amount: 15,000.
Below that, a name: Mr. K.
Below that, a notation: Interest.
I flipped through page after page.
The ledger's entries spanned over five years, from 2019 all the way to the present—last week's date still fresh on the most recent page. Amounts ranged from thousands to tens of thousands. The frequency was relatively low in the early years, perhaps once or twice a month, but starting last year it had escalated dramatically. The past six months showed entries almost weekly, sometimes two or three times a week.
Most of the names meant nothing to me, each one sounding distinctly unsavory.
But certain terms appeared repeatedly, too often to ignore:
Docks.
High interest.
Principal.
Overdue.
My breathing stopped for a moment.
Benjamin had gambling debts.
And these weren't ordinary debts—these were high-interest loans, the kind that came with consequences. The amounts weren't small. The frequency kept increasing. The past six months showed a classic debt spiral—borrowing new money to pay old debts, each cycle tightening the noose.
I flipped through a few more pages and found an entry that made my heart truly race:
Date: Last Wednesday.
Amount: 120,000.
Note: "Final batch at the docks. Principal and interest settled in full—or face the consequences."
One hundred twenty thousand dollars.
Principal and interest settled in full.
Or face the consequences.
I photographed these pages as well. The phone screen's glow seemed blindingly bright in the darkness, so I quickly dimmed it to the lowest setting.
---
Restoring the scene took ten minutes.
Every paper returned to its original position. Every drawer restored to its former state. The envelope tucked back under the newspaper, properly weighted. The black ledger returned to the bottom layer, covered again with old newspapers.
Phone back in my pocket.
When I stood, my legs had gone slightly numb—I'd been crouching too long.
I tiptoed out of the study, easing the door shut. Returning the key to Benjamin's pants pocket was the most nerve-wracking part—I had to ensure the position and depth matched exactly, with no suspicious creases or displacement.
After completing everything, I returned to my room.
Closed the door. Locked it. Sat down with my back against the door.
My heart was racing.
But not from nervousness.
From something I hadn't felt in a very long time.
It was—
Hope.
---
Benjamin Miller was not an invincible man.
That had been my perception of him since childhood: tall, dominant, controlling everything, never making mistakes. His word was law. His gaze was judgment. When he put his hands on me, the world bent to his will.
But tonight, in that musty, tobacco-scented study, I had seen the truth.
He was just a greedy, gambling-addicted ordinary man.
He had transferred nearly eighty-one percent of the estate—far more than anyone had estimated. His gambling debts had grown large enough to warrant threats of "consequences." He was using my parents' money to fill a hole that could never be filled.
Greedy people always make mistakes.
Because they're never satisfied. Because of that dissatisfaction, they take risks. Because they take risks, they expose weaknesses. And once weaknesses are exposed, they can be destroyed.
I finally had a card to play.
Not a big one. But enough to see his hand.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
I didn't take it out to look. But I knew who it was.
Seven-day countdown.
Less than four days remaining.
But I no longer felt the anxiety I had before.
Because I now possessed something—something Benjamin Miller had absolutely no idea I had obtained.
And he still thought I was that fourteen-year-old girl who could be reduced to tears with a single sentence.
I closed my eyes, the corners of my mouth curving upward.
No one could see in the darkness.
But that didn't matter.
Soon enough, he would know.
---
At 6:47 a.m., I left the house.
No one saw me. Benjamin and Margaret's bedroom door remained closed, no light showing beneath Anna's door—she was probably still asleep, or awake but too lazy to move.
I carried my tattoo equipment case, phone and keys in my pocket, and all of last night's photographs in my mind.
Destination: the tattoo shop.
---
The studio's iron door looked no different in the morning light than it had yesterday—the weathered exterior wall, the rusted door handle, the half-broken streetlight at the alley entrance. I retrieved the spare key, turned the lock, and pushed the door open.
The moment the industrial lights flickered on, familiar warm yellow light flooded the space. Terrazzo floors, exposed brick walls, the workbench against the wall, design sketches hanging on the walls—everything as it should be.
I set the equipment case on the workbench and pulled out my phone, transferring the photographs one by one to the studio's old desktop computer.
Then I began organizing.
---
First, the trust account transfer records.
I arranged all the bank receipts and transfer vouchers in chronological order, creating an Excel spreadsheet on the computer. Date, amount, recipient, notes—each column crystal clear.
The numbers were staggering.
The first transfer occurred in November 2019, less than six months after I'd moved into the Miller house. Amount: one hundred twenty thousand dollars. Recipient: a company called "Pinnacle Digital Investments." Notes: blank.
Every subsequent entry followed the same pattern—amounts ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, recipients varying wildly, some company names, some that looked like coded personal accounts. The frequency remained relatively restrained in the early years, roughly one transfer every two or three months, but starting last year it had accelerated dramatically. Sometimes two or three transfers in a single month, with individual amounts growing larger.
Cumulative total: thirty-seven million eight hundred thousand dollars.
Eighty-one percent of the total estate.