Page 18 of Vows of Silence

Fair enough. I don’t think I’m that funny, either.I thought to myself.

Until:Luca:Most criminals don’t label their evidence. No matter how organised they are.

“Well, they should. It makes life easier all round. I bet Silas labels all his evidence. ‘Oh look, remember when I murdered Cadaver #467?’”

I laughed and then froze.

Why the fuck had I been thinking about Silas? I glanced at the phone, but Luca hadn’t replied to that comment. I grabbed a bunch of papers in the hopes that we could slip right by and not make a big deal out of it.

“Nothing,” I muttered to myself, seeing nothing overly incriminating, but also nothing I understood either.

It was a lot of shipping receipts spanning over the years. There were always a bunch of additional weight charges applied to the shipments and customs taxes. But nothing that screamed mafia at me.

“They had to pay for extra weight. What could that mean?”

Luca replied with a shrugging emoji.

He knew. I knew he knew. He was just being stubborn about it.

I placed them on the desk and grabbed the next handful.

“Property transfer papers,” I said quietly. “But none of these are on his roster.”

To reassure myself I wasn’t going mad, I fired up his computer—thankful the password tothatwas still the same at least—and loaded up his website.

“Yep, none of these properties are listed as for sale, nor are they on his list of previously sold houses.”

I went through his spreadsheets, trying to line up the property codes, but drew a blank every time.

“Am I thinking too literally here? Property transfer doesn’t necessarily have to mean brick and mortar property, does it? This could be literally anything.”

Once again, no typing bubble.

“Great time to go silent, friend. I hope you’re still keeping an eye on things out there.”

Luca:I am. Hurry up.

“I am, I am. Sheez.”

I went to shut everything down on the computer when a folder caught my eye.

IB

I clicked on it before I could second-guess myself, only to find it was password protected, and it wasn’t the same one used to unlock the computer.

Why would my father have a password-protected folder named after me? I was fairly certain that IB was for my initials. What else could it be?

“I’m locked out here, Luca. And I’m pretty sure this is a folder with my initials on it. Any chance you can wave that magic wand of yours and get me in?”

Whilst I waited for him to reply, I pulled more papers from the briefcase and glanced through them.

“It looks as though there are some contracts here, but none of it is making sense. I don’t think the briefcases have beenfiled. I think these are just things that were thrown in here for safekeeping, to be organised at a later date,” I said, throwing them back into the briefcase but making a mental note of some of the names I had seen. It made sense. I did so much of my dad’s organising for him. But he was hardly going to let me have access to his secret room documents, was he?

“Any luck getting me in?” I asked, clicking back on theIBfolder.

It was still locked.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been bested by a simple folder lock, wizard. And here I thought you could do anything,” I smiled, thinking that would get him to reply.