After four years behind bars, I came home hoping for nothing more than to hug my father, but my stepmother opened the front door and said, “He passed away eight months ago. This property belongs to me now.” I silently walked to the graveyard with an old key in my pocket, completely unaware that the caretaker was about to whisper something that would shatter my reality.

I pressed the phone to my ear. My hands were shaking again, but not from the fight.

"Dad?" my voice broke on the single word.

"Julian," my father replied. The sound of his voice in real-time broke a dam inside my chest. "You did well tonight, son. But I’m sorry you had to bleed for it."

"Where are you?" I demanded. "Let me come to you. We have the evidence; we can go to the police right now!"

"No," my father said firmly. "The police can't touch them yet. Evelyn transferred the embezzled funds to a Cayman Islands account using a physical ledger. Without that ledger, she can claim you forged the digital files to frame her. She’ll use her expensive lawyers to drag this out for a decade."

"Where is the ledger?"

"She hid it in plain sight. Before she remodeled the house, she sold all my antique furniture to an estate liquidator. The ledger is hidden inside the false bottom of my grandfather clock."

I closed my eyes. "The clock is gone, Dad. I saw the foyer. She stripped the house bare."

"I know," my father said. "But Sloane tracked the buyer. The clock was purchased by a private collector named Silas Vance. He lives in a fortress of a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. You have to break in, Julian. You have to get that ledger before tomorrow morning."

"Consider it done."

"Julian," my father’s voice softened. "I am so proud of the man you’ve become. When this is over... we’re going fishing. Just you and me."