Chapter 2 - The Ghost of Park Avenue
The storm cleared by dawn, leaving Manhattan blanketed in a sharp, blinding white.
At 8:30 AM on Christmas morning, Harrison Mercer stepped out of the elevator into his forty-first-floor penthouse. He wore a fresh shirt, but his dark eyes were heavy with exhaustion and guilt. Sienna Blake had proven demanding, clinging to him until dawn, demanding promises about divorcing Clare.
Harrison had dismissed Sienna's pressure. In his mind, Clare was soft. She was devoted. She was thirty-one weeks pregnant with his son and had nowhere to go. He planned to give her a massive diamond bracelet, blame his late-night absence on a panic attack about fatherhood, and sweep it under the rug.
"Clare?" he called out, tossing his coat onto the bench.
Silence greeted him.
He walked into the kitchen. The Christmas dinner sat rotting on the table. The candles were burned down to puddles of wax.
Then his eyes fell on the Christmas tree.
His wedding ring sat gleaming on the floor. Beside it lay the unopened Tiffany ornament.
Harrison felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. He walked over to the dining table and froze.
Scrawled in bold, sharp black marker across the pristine white linen were the words:
The ledger at 410 Park Avenue remembers Eleanor. Merry Christmas, Harrison.
Harrison’s mug shattered on the floor, hot coffee splashing across his shoes. His face drained of all color until he looked like a corpse.
"No," he choked out, staggering backward. "No, no, no."
He sprinted into his study. His safe was unlocked. The wooden box from his father’s storage locker was gone.
Harrison pulled out his phone, his hands shaking so violently he dropped it twice. He dialed Clare’s number.
“The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”
He called his head of security, Sam Russo. "Sam! Track Clare's phone! Check her credit cards! Find out where she went!"
"Mr. Mercer, her phone was turned off at 2:30 AM," Sam replied calmly. "And there are no transactions on any of your joint cards."
"Then hire private investigators!" Harrison screamed into the phone, his voice cracking with rising panic. "Find her! She has something... she took something from my father's files!"
Meanwhile, three miles away, a black sedan pulled up outside 410 Park Avenue—a majestic, pre-war limestone building with ornate copper gates.
Clare stepped out, wearing a heavy dark coat that concealed her bump. She walked past the doorman, who recognized the brass key in her hand immediately.
"Floor four, apartment B, Mrs. Mercer," the elderly doorman said quietly, bowing his head. "Mr. William Mercer paid the maintenance fees on that unit thirty years in advance. No one has entered since he passed."
Clare took the antique brass elevator to the fourth floor. The air inside Apartment 4B smelled of old paper, lavender, and cedar. It was an artist’s loft, lined with hundreds of oil paintings depicting the Hudson Valley.
In the center of the room stood a massive mahogany desk. Clare used the brass key to unlock the bottom drawer.
Inside lay a thick, leather-bound journal—the original accounting ledger of Mercer Holdings from 1994 to 2010.
As Clare turned the yellowed pages, her breath hitched. William Mercer had documented everything. Harrison hadn't built Mercer Holdings from scratch. William had used fifty million dollars from the trust fund of his first wife, Eleanor’s mother, to buy the original Manhattan properties. When she died, William was supposed to hold the shares in trust for Eleanor.
Instead, when Harrison took over the company five years ago, he had forged Eleanor’s signature on a surrender of rights document, declaring her deceased, and absorbed her fifty percent stake into his own private portfolio to prepare for Mercer Holdings’ upcoming ten-billion-dollar IPO.
Clare closed the ledger. Tears of anger burned her eyes.
"He didn't just cheat on me," Clare whispered, pressing her hand to her belly. "He ruined lives."
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a secure line she had purchased that morning.
May you like
A text appeared from an unknown number:
I know you have the ledger, Clare. My name is Eleanor Parker. We need to talk before Harrison kills us both.
