Chapter 5 - The Burned Page
Delphine kept the evidence inside a cookbook.
Not a safe.
Not a bank box.
Not a hidden compartment in a painting.
A cookbook.
Casius stared at the battered copy of The Picayune Creole Cook Book on the library desk.
“You hid eleven years of evidence in recipes?”
“No one in my family cooks.”
“That may be the most secure system I’ve ever heard of.”
She almost smiled.
The page had been cut from a ledger the night of the warehouse fire.
One edge was blackened.
The paper was brittle and smelled faintly of smoke even after eleven years.
Columns listed freight numbers, medical suppliers, cash transfers, and initials.
S.B.
M.F.
R.V.
Casius studied them.
“Sterling Bowmont.”
“Yes.”
“Matteo Ferraro.”
“That is what I began to suspect after we married.”
“And R.V.?”
“I don’t know.”
Gideon stood by the windows.
“Could be Raymond Vescari.”
Casius looked up.
Vescari controlled a smaller river operation and had spent years trying to buy access to Ferraro docks.
“He was blamed for the bombing,” Casius said.
“Blamed,” Gideon corrected. “Never proven.”
Delphine tapped another line.
“Look at the dates.”
The final entries occurred two weeks before the warehouse fire.
Then the list stopped.
“What were they moving?” Casius asked.
“I think diverted hospital supplies at first. Pain medication, surgical inventory, anything with resale value.”
“Eleven years ago.”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
Delphine slid over a second file.
“Bowmont Risk Services still consults for three hospital groups and two shipping insurers. Ferraro logistics carries bonded medical freight through the river terminal.”
Casius’s face hardened.
“Matteo oversees terminal compliance.”
Gideon swore.
Delphine continued.
“I don’t think the scheme ended. I think it got respectable.”
Casius rolled back from the desk.
For twenty months, he had believed the bombing came from a rival family.
If Matteo had arranged it, then the attack had not been war.
It had been succession planning.
And if Sterling helped sabotage the recovery, Delphine’s father had not merely accepted his daughter’s arranged marriage.
He had married her to a man he expected to lose power.
That thought angered Casius more than the bombing.
“What did Sterling think would happen to you after marrying me?”
Delphine’s eyes lowered.
“He probably expected I would remain useful as leverage and invisible as a wife.”
“No.”
She looked up.
Casius’s voice was calm.
“You are neither.”
Something moved in her expression.
He turned back to the evidence.
“We need originals.”
“The hospital records?”
“And shipping manifests. Payment chains. Anything tying Matteo directly to Bowmont.”
Delphine nodded.
Gideon said, “If Matteo knows we’re looking—”
“He doesn’t,” Casius replied.
“Yet.”
That evening, Dr. Cho worked him until his shirt was soaked through.
Casius stood between parallel bars for eleven seconds.
Not elegantly.
His knees were braced.
Both hands carried most of his weight.
His left leg shook hard enough that Gideon moved closer.
But he stood.
Eleven seconds.
When he lowered back into the chair, his body felt like it had been dismantled.
Dr. Cho wrote something on her clipboard.
Delphine sat across the room.
She had promised not to treat him.
She had not promised not to watch.
“You counted,” he said.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Eleven seconds.”
He laughed once.
“Of course you counted.”
“You started it.”
“What?”
“Counting.”
He understood.
Four seconds before she accepted the marriage.
Seconds in the therapy pool.
Seconds men needed to lie.
He looked at her.
“Why did you really say yes so quickly?”
She folded her hands.
“You were the first person at that table who asked what I wanted.”
“I asked after you agreed.”
“You asked with your face before my father finished speaking.”
“That sounds sentimental.”
“It was not.”
Her mouth softened.
“You looked angry that no one had offered me a chair.”
Casius remembered.
He had been.
“I thought,” Delphine continued, “that a man who resented people rearranging furniture around his body might understand a woman who resented people arranging her entire life around her face.”
The room went very quiet.
Dr. Cho pretended to review notes.
Gideon developed a sudden interest in the far wall.
Casius felt something inside him shift in a way rehabilitation could not measure.
“Delphine.”
She looked at him.
He wanted to say too much.
So he said the one thing that mattered.
“You were right about my leg.”
“Yes.”
“I hate that.”
“I know.”
He smiled.
She smiled back.
The moment ended when Gideon’s phone vibrated.
His expression changed.
“What?”
“Bowmont security requested archived footage from the warehouse fire this morning.”
Delphine stood.
“Why now?”
“Because someone accessed the old insurance file yesterday.”
She looked at Casius.
Her authorization request.
Her search.
Sterling knew someone was looking.
“Your father?” Casius asked.
“Probably.”
Gideon continued. “There’s more. Camille called the Ferraro office twice.”
“Why?”
“She asked whether Mrs. Ferraro was home tonight.”
Delphine’s face went blank.
Casius’s voice lowered.
“Where is the cookbook usually kept?”
“In my old room.”
“At the Bowmont house?”
“Yes.”
“You brought it here?”
“Yesterday.”
Casius looked at the burned ledger page.
They had moved the evidence less than twenty-four hours before someone began searching.
Camille might be cruel.
Sterling might be frightened.
Matteo might be ambitious.
But fear made people careless.
And careless people revealed routes.
Casius folded the page into an evidence sleeve Gideon had brought.
“No one goes to the Bowmont house alone.”
Delphine frowned.
“I wasn’t asking permission.”
“I know.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because I’m going with you.”
She glanced at the wheelchair.
Not with pity.
Logistics.
“The third floor has no elevator.”
“Then we start downstairs.”
“And if the evidence is upstairs?”
Casius met her eyes.
“Then someone carries the chair or I climb.”
Delphine stared at him.
“That is medically irresponsible.”
“So is marrying into my family.”
She tried not to laugh.
Failed.
For the first time since their wedding, the sound filled the library without fear.
Then the house alarm chimed.
Not the perimeter.
The service gate.
Gideon checked the monitor.
His face hardened.
May you like
Camille Bowmont was outside.
And she was crying.
