Chapter 2 - Paper Trails and Broken GlassBy three in the morning, the police cruisers had cleared from the cobblestone street outside. The quiet of the house felt unnatural, vast and hollow without the heavy hum of Daniel’s presence.
I sat at the kitchen island, a thick wool blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Across from me sat my sister, Rachel. She hadn't spoken more than ten words since Detective Reed called her to the house, but her hands trembled as she poured herbal tea into two ceramic mugs.
"I thought you hated me," Rachel whispered, placing a mug in front of me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, heavy with years of grief and distance. "When you stopped answering my calls last year... I thought you’d chosen him."
"He told me you were trying to ruin us," I said, my voice barely above a rasp. I looked down at my hands. The fingers on my left wrist were still stiff from where Daniel had pinned me down the night before. "He said you were jealous. He made every text you sent look like an attack."
"I knew," she said softly, reaching across the marble counter to lay her hand over mine. "I knew the moment you stopped wearing short sleeves two summers ago. But every time I tried to step in, you pulled further away."
"Because every time you stepped in, the price got higher when the front door closed."
A shadow crossed the doorway, and Detective Reed walked back into the kitchen, holding a clipboard and a clear evidence bag containing the small transmitter sewn into my cuff.
"The magistrate just signed off on the initial charges," Reed said, pulling out a stool and sitting down. "Aggravated assault, witness intimidation, and grand larceny related to the fraudulent mortgage signature. He's being held without bail until the arraignment on Tuesday."
"He'll get out, Marcus," I said, using his first name for the first time. "He knows every judge, every prosecutor, every major donor in the city. Mercer House raises three million dollars a year for domestic violence victims. He’s the poster child for charity in Baltimore."
"Not anymore," Reed said firmly. "The recording from tonight is airtight. But you're right about one thing: Daniel Mercer is not going to sit in a cell and wait for trial. He has resources. He has people who owe him favors. Which means we need to find out what else he was hiding before his legal team gets to it."
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I looked toward the hallway that led to Daniel’s private study—a room that had been locked to me for half a decade.
"The bank notice was just forty thousand dollars," I said, standing up and shedding the blanket. "He didn't borrow that money to cover house payments. Mercer House is missing money, Marcus. I know it."
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