Chapter 15: The Receipts

The police took our statements until two in the morning.

Nobody had found Sonia.

My chief of staff drove us to the Perry Street townhouse, where Northlight puts up visiting directors.

It was raining, and the front hall smelled of cedar and dust.

She set a banker's box on the table in the study.

"You asked for the Ambrose file, Mr. Thornton," she said. "Four years of it."

"I asked for it this morning."

"It was in your own safe the whole time."

She looked at Penelope, nodded once, and went home.

Penelope took off her wet coat and hung it on the back of a chair.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Open it."

I stood at the window and listened to the pages.

She was slow.

Every sheet was a receipt, a wire confirmation or a bank letter.

Her father's mortgage, paid in full.

Her father's pharmacy bills, paid for three years under the name of a medical charity that had never existed.

The lawyer who had held the creditors back, hired by an account with no name.

On the last page, clipped to the top, was a yellow note in my handwriting.

Do not let them know it was us. Do not let them thank us. They have lost enough.

Penelope read it twice.

She put it down very gently.

"You wrote this four years ago," she said.

"The week after the auction."

"You told me at the diner it was for a deal."

"I lied."

"Why?"

"Because it was easier for you to hate me for a deal," I said. "A deal doesn't ask anyone to be grateful."

She came across the study.

I did not turn from the window until she stood beside me.

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