Chapter 2
The game room became a crime scene before breakfast.
Jackson did not like the term.
He accepted it anyway.
Owen brought in an outside forensic-security consultant rather than using only Bellandi personnel.
Jackson’s attorney, Claire Morgan, insisted.
“You have too many relatives on payroll.”
“They’re security professionals.”
“They’re Bellandis first.”
Jackson stared at her.
Claire did not flinch.
“Your problem began because somebody assumed family access meant trustworthy access.”
She pointed toward the broken game room.
“We don’t investigate that with another layer of cousins.”
Jackson disliked her reasoning.
He authorized it.
The first discovery involved the camera.
The game room usually had one security camera covering the exterior door and the section of the room containing the liquor cabinets and card tables.
It did not film private conversations at the council-room entrance.
At 7:38 that evening, the camera had gone offline.
The maintenance ticket read:
Intermittent image distortion. Local reset authorized.
“Was there distortion?” Jackson asked.
Owen shook his head.
“Not in the previous logs.”
“Who authorized the reset?”
Owen hesitated.
“Chad.”
Jackson said nothing.
Chad helped supervise some estate recreation and event operations.
He technically had authority to request maintenance.
That alone proved nothing.
But emergency alerts had been rerouted fourteen minutes later.
The council meeting began at eight.
Leo entered the game room around 8:15.
Jackson looked at the timeline.
“What was Chad supposed to be doing during the council meeting?”
“Attending it.”
“He wasn’t.”
“No.”
Nobody at the council table remembered Chad leaving because he had never entered with them.
He had told one capo he needed to make a call first.
Claire wrote that down.
Then the broken poker table created the next problem.
When forensic technicians lifted the damaged felt top, they found a narrow steel document case secured beneath the internal frame.
Jackson had never seen it.
Neither had Owen.
The poker table had been custom-built eight years earlier.
There was no reason for a removable document case to be attached underneath it.
Claire stopped everyone from opening it until photographs were taken and the chain of custody documented.
Jackson waited.
Inside were three things.
A thick stack of cash.
A prepaid phone.
And a black ledger.
Jackson stared at the book.
The first page listed dates.
Names.
Dollar amounts.
Private poker games.
Sports wagers.
Cash settlements.
Some amounts exceeded fifty thousand dollars.
At the bottom of several pages appeared the initials:
J.B.
Jackson looked at Claire.
“These aren’t mine.”
“I didn’t ask yet.”
“They’re not.”
“Good.”
She closed the ledger without touching more pages.
“Then we prove that.”
Owen asked the question hanging in the room.
“Was Chad trying to hide this?”
Jackson looked at the steel case.
Maybe.
Chad had been standing in this room alone.
Leo had walked in.
Chad had terrorized him.
The emergency alarm was disabled.
The camera was off.
It fit.
Too easily.
Jackson had survived long enough to distrust explanations that arrived perfectly formed.
“Don’t decide what it means,” he said.
May you like
Owen looked at him.
“Not until we know whose money that is and who put that book under my table.”
