Chapter 5: The Pressure Comes Home
They didn't wait long.
I was back in my apartment by early afternoon when the knock came.
Not a buzz from the lobby intercom.
A knock directly on my door, which meant someone had been let in by a neighbor or had waited in the stairwell.
I looked through the peephole.
My father.
Alone.
Jacket on, no tie, which meant he had come quickly.
He raised his hand to knock again and I opened the door before he could.
He looked at me for a moment.
Then he looked past me into the apartment.
"Can I come in?"
"No."
His jaw tightened slightly.
"Genevieve, I think we need to talk."
"We're talking."
He glanced down the hallway in both directions.
"Not out here."
"Then we're not talking." I kept my hand on the door frame.
"What do you want, Dad?"
He reset his expression.
Calm.
Reasonable.
The face he wore in boardrooms.
"Your grandfather left some personal papers in the house.
Documents, maybe some old files.
We think you may have taken them by mistake when you were there last night."
"By mistake," I said.
"It happens.
People are grieving.
They pick things up without thinking."
"I didn't take anything that wasn't mine."
Something shifted behind his eyes.
"The music box," he said.
"What was inside it?"
"Sheet music," I said.
"And a note from Grandfather.
Personal.
To me."
"I'd like to see it."
"No."
He was quiet for three full seconds.
When he spoke again, the boardroom voice was gone.
"You have no idea what you're getting into," he said.
"Whatever you think you found, whatever story you've built in your head — you need to stop.
Right now.
Before this becomes something none of us can walk back from."
"I haven't done anything."
"You called someone this morning." His voice dropped.
"I know you did.
Who did you call, Genevieve?"
My stomach tightened.
I didn't let it reach my face.
"I called a friend," I said.
"Is that a problem?"
"Which friend?"
"Goodbye, Dad."
I started to close the door.
His hand came up and held it — not forcefully, but firmly.
The way a man holds a door when he is not quite ready to threaten someone but is no longer pretending either.
"Your grandfather was not well," he said quietly.
"In his last years, he was confused.
He was manipulated by people who wanted access to his assets.
Whatever documents you found, whatever he wrote — it was written by a man who was not in his right mind.
Any court will see that."
"Let go of the door."
"I'm trying to protect you."
"Let go of the door."
He held it one more second.
Then he released it.
"Think carefully," he said.
"This affects the whole family.
Not just me.
Your mother.
Chloe.
Think about what you're doing to all of us."
I closed the door.
I stood with my back against it for a moment, listening to his footsteps move down the hallway.
Slow.
Unhurried.
The walk of a man who believed he still had time.
I went to my desk and opened my laptop.
He had said: *I know you called someone this morning.*
I had used my personal cell phone to call Grace.
But my personal cell phone was now in an evidence envelope at the U.S.
Attorney's office.
Which meant he had found out another way.
I thought about the coffee shop.
Corner table, backs to the wall.
But the window had faced the street.
I pulled up my email and sent Grace a single line: *He came to my apartment.
He knows I made a call.
Check for surveillance.*
Her reply came back in four minutes: *Already noted.
Don't use your home wifi.
Go to your neighbor's or a café.
New burner number incoming.*
I looked around my apartment.
At the router on the bookshelf.
At the laptop I had just used to send that email.
I closed the laptop, picked up my keys, and left.
In the stairwell, one floor below mine, I passed my neighbor Mrs.
Parrish — seventy-two, retired, walked her dog at the same time every day.
She stopped when she saw my face.
"You alright, honey?"
"Fine," I said.
"Did anyone come through the lobby in the last hour?
Someone you didn't recognize?"
She thought about it.
"A man in a dark jacket.
Said he was visiting his daughter on the fourth floor.
I held the door." She paused.
"Was that wrong?"
I shook my head.
"No.
It's okay."
But it wasn't.
My father had told her he was visiting his daughter.
He had known exactly which building.
Which floor.
He had been here before, or someone had told him.
I kept walking down the stairs.
By the time I reached the street, a text arrived from an unknown number.
The burner Grace had promised.
*Thomas Aldrich located.
He didn't know about the funeral.
He didn't know about the will.
He thought your grandfather was still alive.*
I stopped on the sidewalk.
Thomas had not been told his grandfather was d\*ad.
My father had kept him away from the funeral, away from the will reading, and had never told him any of it happened.
I typed back: *Does he know now?*
Three dots.
Then: *He does.
Grace told him an hour ago.
He's on a flight tomorrow morning.*
I stood on the street outside my building and looked up at my apartment window on the fourth floor.
May you like
My father thought he had come here to slow me down.
He had no idea Thomas was already in the air.
