Chapter 2 - The Red Notebook in the Floorboards
The silence in my apartment felt heavy, almost suffocating, after the video call disconnected. I stood up from the dining room table, my legs still trembling, and backed away from the middle of the room.
If they were watching me through hidden cameras, where were those cameras placed?
I looked around the open-concept living space I had shared with Ryan for three years. The brass bookshelf in the corner. The smoke detector directly above the kitchen island. The digital clock sitting on the television console. Every ordinary object suddenly felt like an eye, cold and unblinking, tracking my movements.
I forced myself to keep my face neutral. I took a deep breath, walked into the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and swallowed two pain relievers. I acted out the routine of a sick wife getting ready for bed, exactly as Ryan expected me to.
When I entered the master bedroom, I drew the blackout curtains, turned off the overhead light, and climbed under the duvet. But I didn't sleep. I lay in the dark, my heart hammering against my ribs, listening to the muffled sounds of the lakefront building around me.
At 2:15 AM, I heard it again.
It was a faint, rhythmic thud directly above my head—the sound of someone pacing across Claire’s hardwood floors in heavy socks. Then came the soft creak of the pipes inside our shared plumbing stack.
Ryan was up there. He was moving through his dead brother’s apartment while I lay in his bed below.
I waited until 3:30 AM, when the building fell into total standstill. I pulled off the heavy duvet, slipped into rubber-soled sneakers, and grabbed a small tactical flashlight I kept in my nightstand drawer.
My former job as a litigation assistant had taught me that when people plot something complex, they leave a paper trail. They leave receipts, notes, or physical back-ups. And Ryan was a creature of meticulous habit. He never trusted digital cloud storage for things he considered truly critical; he always kept physical records.
I walked into his home office, a small room off the hallway lined with built-in oak bookshelves.
I didn't turn on the light. I used the dim red filter on my flashlight to scan the room, keeping low to avoid any potential camera angles from the doorway. I checked his desk drawers. Locked. I checked his filing cabinet. Only tax returns, insurance policies, and appliance warranties.
Then I noticed the rug.
It was an antique Turkish runner Ryan had brought home eight months ago—around the same time Luke died. It sat beneath his desk, slightly misaligned with the floorboards.
I knelt on the floor, lifted the corner of the wool rug, and felt along the tongue-and-groove oak planks. Three feet from the baseboard, one of the boards yielded slightly beneath my thumb. It was a secret floor safe, built into the dead space between our ceiling and Claire’s floor above.
My fingers shook as I pried the thin wooden cover up.
Inside lay a red leather-bound notebook and a small Manila folder labeled with a string of numbers: 094-112-L.
I opened the red notebook under the dim red glow of my flashlight.
The handwriting belonged to my husband. The first entry was dated fourteen months ago—two months before Luke’s fatal car accident on Interstate 94.
October 14: Luke’s business restructuring is complete. The trust holds $4.2 million in liquid equities and $1.8 million in commercial real estate. Claire’s name is listed as sole beneficiary upon death, but clause 4B restricts immediate payout unless certified as mentally incapable or deceased.
I flipped the page, my stomach dropping into a cold abyss.
December 2: Luke refuses to sign the secondary management agreement. He suspects the ledger discrepancies in the Lakeview holdings. Time is running out. If he audits the account in January, everything falls apart.
February 11: The brake line assembly on the Suburban is completed. T. verified the delay mechanism works under heavy strain. Weather forecast predicts freezing rain on I-94 tomorrow night.
I stopped reading. My hand covered my mouth as a choked sob escaped my throat.
Luke’s death hadn't been an accident.
It wasn't an SUV losing control on a slick highway. Ryan had murdered his own brother for an inheritance trust.
And then I turned to the final page of the notebook, dated just three weeks ago.
July 19: Emily’s stomach symptoms are worsening according to schedule. The arsenic-derived compound provided by C. is working without raising standard blood panel flags. Once the gastroenterologist confirms permanent liver damage, the secondary insurance rider ($2.5 million) becomes executable. C. will manage the soup dosage through the weekend.
The room spun. The walls seemed to tilt inward, suffocating me.
The chicken-and-rice soup Claire had brought me twenty minutes earlier. The sickness that had kept me bedridden for three days. The constant nausea that had started three months ago.
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They weren't just having an affair. They weren't just watching me on camera.
They were poisoning me.
