Chapter 2 - The Secret Ledger
I walked over to the garment bags stacked behind the dryer and inspected the handwritten ticket.
Fern’s Elite Resale – Rush Processing. Bill to Bennett Commercial Group.
My blood ran completely cold. Fern didn't just have a shopping addiction. She was running a high-end designer resale boutique online. And she was using my house, my water, and my housekeeper’s physical labor to launder, steam, and package hundreds of heavy garments a week.
I left the laundry room exactly as it was, walked into Alex’s home office, and bypassed his computer. I went straight to the steel safe hidden in the floorboard beneath his desk. I knew the combination—he used our anniversary. I had never had a reason to open it before.
Inside was a thick, black leather ledger.
I flipped it open, and the betrayal hit me so hard I physically stumbled backward.
It was a shadow ledger for a subsidiary account under Bennett Commercial Group. For the past two years, Alex had been authorizing a $25,000 monthly payout to a shell LLC owned by his mother, Grace, labeled under "Executive Facility Maintenance."
Grace and Fern were running an illegal, commercial-scale laundry and dry-cleaning operation out of my home to fund Fern's lavish lifestyle. They were using my injured, terrified housekeeper as free, forced labor, threatening her with false theft charges if she spoke up.
And Alex wasn't just looking the other way. He was the boss. He was bankrolling the entire operation just to keep his demanding mother and sister off his back. He had bought his peace by sacrificing an innocent woman’s spine.
The heavy front door suddenly unlocked upstairs.
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"Where is she?!" Grace’s shrill, demanding voice echoed through the foyer, followed by the sound of Alex and Fern’s footsteps. "That lazy woman didn't steam the silk gowns! Fern’s buyers are waiting!"
I closed the safe, took the ledger, and walked upstairs to face the family I was about to destroy.
