Chapter 2 - The Book Beneath the Linen Count
Emily woke under three blankets with a doctor shining a small light into her eyes.
“Follow the light.”
She did.
Her head hurt. Her fingers tingled painfully as warmth returned to them. Somewhere nearby, a fireplace crackled.
“Where am I?”
“The east guest room,” said a woman in navy scrubs. “I’m Dr. Lena Walsh. Mr. Grimm called me in.”
Emily remembered snow. Richard. Nicholas carrying her.
“The staff—”
“They’re safe.”
The doctor checked her temperature again. “You were dangerously cold, but you’re improving. No frostbite. You’ll feel awful for a while.”
Emily stared at the ceiling.
“What about Richard?”
A deep voice answered from the doorway.
“Still in the house.”
Nicholas stood there in a dry black shirt with his sleeves rolled to his forearms. Without the overcoat, he looked even more physically imposing. But his expression was controlled.
Dr. Walsh gave him a look. “Five minutes.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“You usually hear things and then ignore them.”
A faint line appeared at the corner of Nicholas’s mouth.
When the doctor left, Emily pushed herself higher against the pillows.
“You should fire me.”
Nicholas stared at her.
“That’s your opening sentence?”
“I broke something.”
“You broke a replica.”
“I broke your property.”
“You nearly froze to death because an employee with authority over you decided embarrassment was an acceptable punishment.”
Emily looked away.
Nicholas pulled a chair closer but did not sit until she looked back at him.
“Tell me about the payroll book.”
She hesitated.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
“That was fast.”
“It was easy.”
Emily studied him. “People are scared of you.”
“They have reasons.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No. It’s the only one you need tonight.”
She should have been intimidated. Instead, his refusal to decorate the truth made her trust him more than a polished reassurance would have.
She told him what she had noticed.
House staff were paid through Grimm Holdings, but Richard distributed overtime slips and approved deductions. Emily had received three deductions she could not explain: uniform replacement, housing administration, and holiday service fee.
“I don’t live here,” she said. “So I asked Rosa whether she had housing deductions too. She did. So did six others.”
Nicholas’s eyes became still.
“How much?”
“Not huge. Seventy dollars here. One hundred twenty there.”
“Small enough not to start a war.”
“Exactly.”
She told him that she had started comparing pay stubs with schedule logs. Richard saw her with the papers two nights earlier.
“He told me staff who asked too many questions didn’t last.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not directly.”
Nicholas’s gaze dropped to the bruises on her arm.
“Until tonight.”
Emily swallowed.
“The second book is in the supply office. Bottom drawer, under the linen inventory folder. Rosa showed it to me yesterday. Richard keeps one version for accounting and another for himself.”
Nicholas stood.
Emily caught his sleeve.
“Don’t punish Rosa.”
He looked at her hand, then her face.
“I won’t.”
“She has two kids.”
“I said I won’t.”
“People say things when they’re angry.”
Nicholas sat back down.
“Emily, look at me.”
She did.
“I am angry. That does not mean I lose control of what I do next.”
Something about the sentence made her chest ache.
She had known too many men who used anger as permission.
Nicholas did not.
Twenty minutes later, Dario Bellini, Nicholas’s security chief, brought in a black ledger.
He placed it on the table.
“We found it where she said.”
Nicholas opened it.
Rows of names.
Deductions.
Cash totals.
Initials.
Emily saw her own name three pages in.
TURNER, E. — 310.
Rosa: 840.
Mr. Ellis: 1,120.
The totals went back fourteen months.
Nicholas’s jaw hardened.
“Where’s Caldwell?”
“In his office with Arthur outside.”
“Phones?”
“Collected.”
Emily noticed Dario hesitate.
“What?” Nicholas asked.
“The security archive for the entrance hall has a nineteen-minute gap.”
Nicholas looked up.
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
Richard had not just thrown her into a blizzard.
He had expected to erase the proof.
Dario continued. “Manual deletion from the house manager terminal.”
Nicholas closed the ledger.
Before he could speak, Rosa appeared at the half-open door. She had clearly been crying.
“Mr. Grimm?”
Nicholas looked up.
“Come in.”
Rosa entered with both hands clasped in front of her apron.
“I should have said something sooner.”
“You’re saying it now.”
“No. I mean about Miss Turner.”
Emily straightened.
Rosa looked at her. “Richard told me yesterday that if she went near the payroll office again, I was supposed to report it. He said she was unstable. Said she had a history of stealing.”
Emily stared at her. “He said what?”
“I didn’t believe him.” Rosa’s voice broke. “But I also didn’t warn you.”
Emily wanted to tell her it was fine. The words rose automatically because she had spent years making other people comfortable. Then she stopped herself.
“It wasn’t fine,” she said. “But I understand why you were scared.”
Rosa nodded, tears spilling down her face.
Nicholas watched the exchange in silence.
“What else did he tell the staff?” he asked.
“That he had your full authority. That anyone who went around him would never work in this city again.”
Dario muttered something under his breath.
Nicholas’s face hardened. “He used my name as a weapon.”
Rosa looked terrified she had said too much.
Nicholas noticed.
“No one in this house loses a job for telling me what happened,” he said. “Not tonight. Not later. If anyone pressures you to change your story, you call Dario directly.”
He wrote a number on the back of the ledger page and handed it to her.
Emily watched Rosa leave with the paper clenched in her fist.
“That mattered,” Emily said.
“What?”
“You telling her she won’t be punished.”
Nicholas looked back at the ledger. “It should not have needed saying.”
“Maybe. But it did.”
He nodded once.
Nicholas closed the ledger.
“That’s enough to remove him from the property.”
Emily asked, “Then why is he still here?”
“Because I want to know who taught him to steal from me.”
She frowned.
“You think someone else is involved?”
Nicholas opened to the last page.
At the bottom were three transfers much larger than the staff deductions.
$48,000.
$75,000.
$92,000.
Each was marked V. M.
Emily asked, “Who’s V.M.?”
Dario looked at Nicholas.
The pause told Emily the name carried history.
Nicholas turned the ledger sideways and tapped one of the transfers. “Notice the dates.”
Emily looked closer. Each large payment happened on a day the mansion hosted private meetings: a charity dinner, a foundation board session, a memorial gathering. Busy days. Days with caterers, florists, drivers, rented linens, and enough vendors that one extra invoice could disappear in the noise.
“He hid the transfers inside event costs,” Emily said.
Dario nodded. “And used staff deductions to balance the totals.”
Nicholas looked at her. “You saw that fast.”
“My mother used to say rich people call it accounting when poor people would call it not having enough grocery money.”
Dario almost smiled.
Nicholas did not. “Your mother sounds intelligent.”
“She was.”
The past tense hung there.
Nicholas did not ask a careless question. He simply turned the page.
That small restraint made Emily notice him differently.
Not as the man who owned the house.
As the man who was choosing, sentence by sentence, what kind of power he intended to be.
Dario looked at Nicholas.
Nicholas did not answer immediately.
Then he said, “Victor Morrow.”
The name meant nothing to Emily.
Apparently it meant everything to Dario.
“He’s dead,” Dario said.
May you like
Nicholas’s expression darkened.
“He’s supposed to be.”
