Chapter 2 - THE DEBT DAVID NEVER MENTIONED
For seven years, I had treated the word accident as a door no one could open.
An electrical fault, the official report said. A faulty lock, a delayed evacuation, a dockside storage building full of flammable packaging. My father, Eli Rowan, had gone inside to make sure the night crew was clear. Four people died at Bellwether Terminal that morning. The newspaper printed their names once and printed the company's reassuring statement three times.
Now a stranger was claiming Page Forty-Seven of a mafia boss's ledger could tell me something else.
I showed Nina the messages. She read them without speaking, then placed her phone beside mine.
“We should save them,” she said. “Screenshots, timestamps, everything. And we should tell somebody who isn't a man with bodyguards.”
“You mean the police?”
“I mean a lawyer. Maybe the police after. One thing at a time.”
That was Nina's gift. She could take a moment large enough to swallow me and divide it into objects I could carry.
We emailed copies to an address she used for important records. She wrote down the numbers. I deleted nothing.
At one in the morning, David began calling. At one fifteen, he left a voicemail so gentle that it made me colder than his angry texts.
“Cass, I was under pressure. I shouldn't have come to your job. I love you. Call me and we'll fix this.”
I did not answer.
“You're allowed to end it,” Nina said from the kitchen doorway.
“I know.”
“Knowing and doing are different things.”
I looked at the screen again. My father's name was still there. I'd heard it spoken so rarely since his death that the letters felt almost private.
“I'll end it,” I said. “But first I want to know how David knew about that book.”
At three, while Nina slept, I pulled up the last bank statement I'd shared with David. A row of transfers looked back at me, each one justified by a different emergency. He had paid back none of them. The last transfer had occurred at seven fifty-two the previous evening, only minutes before he started asking me to steal the ledger page. I had been working then. He had used the account access I once gave him for groceries.
I changed my passwords, notified my bank, and made a list of accounts that needed new security questions. It felt humiliating to realize how many times I had mistaken access for intimacy. David knew my childhood dog's name, my mother's birthday, and the number I used on my luggage lock. None of those details made him safe. They only made him familiar.
I filed a report with the bank's fraud department and wrote down the reference number. Nothing about it felt heroic. My hands were cold and the phone menu repeated itself three times. But when I finished, I no longer had to wonder whether another transfer would happen while I slept.
At six the next morning, Nina made scrambled eggs and informed me she'd already called her cousin Marisol, a legal-aid attorney in Brooklyn. Marisol couldn't take the case herself, but she'd given Nina the number of an attorney who handled harassment and financial coercion. I wrote it down.
Before I could call, my phone rang from a blocked number.
“Ms. Rowan? Roman Gallagher.”
I nearly dropped my coffee.
“How did you get my number?”
“Your employer had it. I asked. I shouldn't have done that without checking with you.”
That unexpected admission disarmed me for exactly one second.
“You also had someone warn me not to go home?”
“Yes. A guard saw your boyfriend speaking to a man who'd been watching our staff entrance. He recognized the man.”
“From what?”
“A company that has been stealing from me. And possibly from the families my company owes money to.”
I stared at the wall. “What families?”
Silence at the other end. Then, “Can we speak somewhere you choose, with anyone you want present?”
“About Page Forty-Seven?”
He drew a slow breath.
“Who told you about Page Forty-Seven?”
“Someone who thinks you might burn it.”
“I'm trying very hard not to.”
I met him at a bakery on a busy corner at ten. Nina sat across from me, one eyebrow raised as Roman arrived without a visible entourage. A security driver waited at a distance outside; I noticed because Roman didn't try to disguise it.
He wore a navy coat instead of the charcoal jacket from last night. In daylight, he looked less like a legend and more like a man who had forgotten what a full night of sleep felt like.
He sat only after I nodded.
“I'll start with an apology,” he said. “My men had no right to frighten you. Neither did I.”
“Was the ‘say it again’ thing supposed to be funny?” Nina asked.
“A very poor attempt.”
“Extremely poor,” I said.
“I've been told.”
He ordered tea. Nina looked almost offended on my behalf that a feared crime boss could drink something so harmless.
“Tell me about David Pike,” Roman said.
“You first. Why was he outside my job?”
Roman set his hands around the cup. “Eight months ago, I ordered an audit of a benefit fund tied to Bellwether Terminal. The fund was supposed to cover medical costs and lost wages for families after a warehouse fire. More than two million dollars went out in the last five years. The beneficiaries received a fraction of it.”
I heard my heartbeat in my ears.
“My mother got fourteen thousand dollars,” I said. “After months of paperwork. We used it to pay funeral costs and keep the apartment.”
“Your father worked there?”
“Yes.”
“What's his name?”
“Eli Rowan.”
Roman's hands tightened around the cup. The change was small but unmistakable.
“I've seen that name.”
“Where?”
“Several places. His account should have closed when the final survivor payment was made. Instead, a benefits contractor has charged monthly consultation fees against it for years.”
“Consultation?” I repeated. “With a dead man?”
“Exactly.”
Nina leaned forward. “And who authorized those payments?”
“The signatures trace back to my office.”
The bakery noises seemed to recede. A toddler laughed beside the pastry counter. Someone dropped a spoon. Roman looked down at the table, then at me.
“I didn't sign those approvals knowingly. But the funds were under my authority. I'm not going to pretend that distinction means nothing.”
“Who handles your books?” I asked.
“A financial director named Gideon Price. He's been with the Gallagher companies since my father ran them.”
“Is he the man David owes?”
“David has been acting as a courier for one of Gideon's outside contractors. We identified him from security footage three days ago. I didn't know you were connected until last night.”
I felt sick remembering every time David had asked what time my shifts ended, whether the club had private offices, how close I ever got to Booth Four.
“He used me,” I said.
“Yes,” Roman answered. “I'm sorry.”
His apology didn't repair anything. But it was a relief not to be asked to protect David from the consequences of his choices.
“Show me the page,” I said.
Roman hesitated. “The original ledger is evidence. I'm arranging to have it copied for an investigator.”
“You're asking me to believe the man who controls it.”
“No. I'm telling you not to believe me without verification.”
He took a sealed folder from his coat and placed it on the table. Inside were two documents: a summary of disbursements and a letter from an independent forensic accounting firm.
At the bottom of the disbursement sheet, beneath rows of numbers, stood ELI ROWAN in capital letters. The account showed payments long after my father died.
I turned the page. A signature appeared on a reimbursement form.
My father's signature. Or something meant to be.
The E tipped the wrong way. The last line of the n curled outward. My father had always finished it with a sharp, irritated stroke, like a man crossing something off his list.
“It's forged,” I said.
Roman studied my face. “How can you be sure?”
“Because he taught me to sign receipts when I was nine. He told me the last letter should look like it knew where it was going.”
I had not known I still remembered those words until I heard myself say them.
I photographed the form. Roman let me.
“I want my mother to see this,” I said.
“Of course.”
“And if you have anything to do with why he died, I'll tell the truth about you too.”
Roman did not look away. “Good.”
Nina folded her arms. “What about David?”
“I won't deal with him privately,” Roman said. “My counsel is preparing records for law enforcement. Cassidy should preserve his messages and speak with her own attorney.”
“Not your attorney?” I asked.
“No. Someone who answers only to you.”
Outside the bakery, Roman paused beside the door.
“There is something else,” he said. “Last night somebody photographed you at my table. That photo made its way to a man I've been trying to identify. He thinks you're useful to me.”
“Am I?”
“Not in the way he hopes.”
I held my folder to my chest. “Then make it clear that I'm not yours to use.”
He nodded. “I will.”
A minute after he left, my phone rang. My mother.
“Cassie?” she said, sounding breathless. “A man came to the apartment asking about your father. He showed me a picture of you with some rich fellow.”
I stopped walking.
“Where are you, Mom?”
“At home. The man left, but he said to tell you something.”
“What?”
“He said Eli wasn't the only one who went back into the building that night.”
I gripped Nina's arm.
May you like
“Mom, lock the door.”
Then my mother whispered, “Cassie, your father used to say the same thing when he was scared. Somebody else went in with him. But that part never made the report.”
