Chapter 8 - The Crimson Ink
The door swung inward with a soft, protesting creak.
Charles Whitmore sat behind his massive mahogany desk, a crystal tumbler half-filled with amber liquid sitting beside a pile of smoldering paper ashes in a silver ash tray. His hair was disheveled, his tie yanked loose around his collar, and his face mottled with ugly red streaks of rage and alcohol.
When he saw me framed in the doorway with Dominic Vale standing quietly behind my shoulder, his face twisted into an expression of pure, venomous hatred.
"You," Charles spat, his voice thick and slurred as he lunged halfway across the desk. "You ungrateful, treasonous bitch. How dare you walk into my home?"
"It’s not your home anymore, Charles," I said, stepping fully into the room, my boots clicking rhythmically against the Persian rug. "The entire estate was seized under the receivership agreement this morning. You’re currently trespassing."
Charles let out a harsh, barking laugh, grabbing his heavy glass tumbler and taking a deep swallow. "Seized? You think a few federal bankruptcy clauses can wipe out thirty years of power? I built this family! I built this company!"
"You built nothing," Dominic spoke up for the first time, his deep voice slicing through the room like a cold blade. He walked over to the side bookshelf, picking up a silver letter opener and turning it slowly in his gloved hand. "You inherited a regional shipping outfit, leveraged it into bankruptcy, and spent two decades living off offshore loans and domestic extortion."
Charles glared at Dominic, his chest heaving. "And who the hell are you to lecture me? A glorified loan shark wrapping your claws around a family dispute!"
"I'm the man who is going to make sure you spend your remaining years answering federal RICO questions," Dominic replied calmly, setting the letter opener down with a sharp clack.
I didn't engage in the shouting match. My eyes drifted past my father, locking onto the heavy mahogany portrait of his grandfather hanging on the wood-paneled wall behind the desk.
"Where is it, Charles?" I asked quietly.
My father froze. His hand, which had been reaching for the scotch bottle, hovered in mid-air. "What are you talking about?"
"The wall safe behind the portrait," I said, taking two deliberate steps toward the desk. "Where you keep the green ledger. And where you hid the original Maryland State Police accident report from the night my mother died six years ago."
The color drained entirely from Charles’s face, leaving him looking suddenly old, frail, and profoundly panicked. His mouth opened, but no words came out.
"I always wondered why you were so eager to bury her without an independent autopsy," I continued, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper that echoed off the wood-paneled walls. "Why you rushed the funeral. Why you told me crying made me look weak. It wasn't because you were grieving, was it, Charles? It was because you couldn't risk anyone looking too closely at the brake lines."
Charles slammed his hands down on the desk, rattling the crystal glass. "She was depressed! The toxicology report proved she took the sedatives—!"
"There was no toxicology report in the original file," I interrupted, my eyes locking onto his terrified gaze. "And I'm about to find out why."
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Before Charles could lunge for the small brass key resting beside his computer keyboard, I vaulted across the corner of the mahogany desk, my hand sweeping the key off the wood just a fraction of a second before his fingers could close around it.
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