Page 131 of This Life of Mine

“You good?”

“Yeah,” I look away from the photo.

Work. I’m here to work.

The study yields almost nothing for the first twenty minutes. Investment reports. Tax records. Property assessments. The kind of paperwork wealthy families accumulate by existing.

I close another folder and suppress my frustration.

“Anything?” Reese asks through my earpiece.

“No.”

“That’s disappointing. I was hoping for a full written confession and maybe a map to buried bodies.”

I ignore him.Smartass.

The office itself tells me more than the paperwork. David’s desk is organized. Meticulous. Everything in its place.

Elinor’s influence is everywhere else in the house—expensive décor, staged to perfection. This room feels different. Functional and very private.

My eyes roam and settle on a locked cabinet built into the wall.

“There you are.”

The lock takes less than a minute.

Inside are several banker boxes. Most contain old trust records. Then I find a smaller file. Bank statements. Personal banking records.

I flip through the pages. Several large withdrawals catch my attention. Not because of the amounts. Because of the destinations. The money moves through multiple accounts. Consulting firms. Management groups. Holding companies. Generic names designed to disappear into paperwork. The kind of entities that exist solely to make money difficult to follow.

I turn another page. Then pause. A red circle surrounds one of the transactions. My eyes narrow.

I flip forward. Another circle. And another. Every withdrawal that raised questions in my mind has already been marked.

I scan the margins. No notes or explanations. Just red ink. Small circles around amounts, account numbers, and company names.

The markings aren’t random. They’re deliberate. Methodical. The work of someone building a list and tracking a pattern.

For several seconds, I stare at the pages. Then I lean back in the chair.

“That’s interesting.”

“What?” Reese asks.

I take a picture and send it.

A moment later his low whistle crackles through the earpiece.

“Well, that’s not suspicious at all.”

My gaze drops back to the documents. The circles vary slightly in thickness and pressure. Different days. Different pens. Whoever marked these didn’t sit down and review everything at once. They came back to it. Again and again. Adding new transactions as they appeared.

Which means this wasn’t curiosity. This was a concern.

A slow realization settles in my chest. I’ve spent weeks assuming David Allister was part of the problem. That he knew more than he admitted. But these documents tell a different story. The same story my instincts have been trying to tell me since I stepped into this office.

A framed newspaper clipping of Lina. Trust records pulled from storage. Bank statements hidden in a locked cabinet. And now this. Red circles around transactions that don’t make sense.