Chapter 2 - The Red Ledger
Callum’s hand went completely motionless against her jaw.
"What did you say?" he asked, his voice barely audible above the hum of the heart monitors down the hall.
"Every Thursday, I clean Thomas’s room," Maeve rasped, tears brimming in her eyes. "You told the staff never to enter the third floor, but I knew... I knew you went in there every Sunday night. I didn't want him sleeping in dust."
Callum’s jaw tightened until a muscle twitched beneath his skin. Thomas Vale had died four years ago in a dockyard explosion that started the bloody war between the Vale family and the Irish mob syndicate known as the O'Connell Clan. Thomas was Callum’s younger brother—the golden child who was supposed to take over the legitimate shipping firm while Callum ran the shadows.
"Go on," Callum murmured.
"This morning, while I was polishing the brass frame on his desk," Maeve explained, her breath catching in her throat, "I found a red leather notebook hidden behind his bookshelf. It wasn't yours, Mr. Vale. It belonged to Thomas. Inside... there were names. Names of men who work for you. Men who take your money."
Callum slowly drew his hand back, his expression turning to stone. "Who?"
"I couldn't read all of them," Maeve confessed, her voice dropping to a desperate whisper. "The dates were from four years ago—right before Thomas died. But the last entry was dated two days ago. It said that Thomas's death wasn't an accident caused by the O'Connells. It was ordered from inside your own house."
Callum stood frozen.
"I didn't know what to do," Maeve sobbed, pulling her knees up toward her chest. "I knew if I gave it to you in the mansion, whoever was watching you would see me give it to you. So I took the notebook to the docks to put it in your private locker at Pier 4—the locker you use when the union rep comes by. I thought... I thought you would find it there tomorrow morning."
"And the men who attacked you?" Callum asked, his voice dropping into a register of sheer, lethal absolute. "Did they take the notebook?"
Maeve shook her head slowly. She reached down with her uninjured right hand, unzipping the inner lining of her worn wool coat.
From a secret seam sewn into the heavy fabric, she pulled out a small, blood-stained red leather booklet and held it out toward him.
"They emptied my purse," Maeve whispered, "but they didn't search my coat. They were looking for something else. They told me... they told me to tell you that the debt from four years ago was finally due."
Callum took the red booklet. His large hand covered the cover completely.
He looked down at the tiny, fragile woman sitting on the edge of the hospital bed—a woman who earned sixteen dollars an hour scrubbing his floors, who had just risked her life, taken a beating, and broken her wrist to protect his brother's memory and keep him from walking into a trap.
He stepped around the side of the bed, reached down, and carefully wrapped his arms around her shoulder and knees.
"Mr. Vale—what are you doing?" Maeve gasped as he lifted her completely off the bed into his arms.
"I'm taking you home," Callum said flatly.
"My discharge papers aren't signed—"
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"I don't care," Callum stated, turning toward the curtain. "You're not staying in a public building where anyone with a five-dollar badge can see your name on a whiteboard."
He walked out of Bay 6 carrying her against his chest. Nurses and patients turned to stare as the terrifying titan of the Boston underworld carried his injured maid through the automatic doors out into the freezing Christmas Eve snow.
