Chapter 2 - The Cold Ledger of Nashville
The rain started hammering the windshield of my pickup before I even cleared the parking lot of Russell’s office. Nashville at night can look like a postcard from a country song, but tonight the neon signs reflecting off the wet asphalt felt like jagged neon scars. My hands were locked around the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles had gone pure white.
Three children. Two boys and a little girl with a failing heart.
And I had spent the last year building a fortress with Tiffany, expanding my trucking empire, signing off on warehouse contracts, and sleeping soundly while the woman I had sworn to protect was out there collecting aluminum cans on the side of a Tennessee highway. The irony was a bitter pill, dry-swallowed without water.
I drove straight to the estate in Belle Meade. The iron gates parted automatically for my plates, the sensors clicking with an electronic precision that suddenly sickened me. Walter Briggs was waiting on the broad front porch, his silhouette framed by the amber glow of the carriage lamps. He was wearing his usual charcoal blazer, hands clasped behind his back, looking like a retired general inspecting troops that had long since stopped listening.
He stepped down as I cut the engine and climbed out into the drizzle.
“Mr. Garrett, you’re back late. Miss Tiffany is inside, she ordered sea bass from the club—”
“Shut up, Walter,” I said. My voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It had the flat, lethal cadence of a man loading a shotgun in a dark room.
Walter paused, his hand hovering near the lapel of his jacket. “Sir?”
“Twenty-six years,” I said, walking slowly around the front of the truck until I was standing two feet from him. The scent of rain and wet gravel hung heavily between us. “You’ve worked for my family for twenty-six years, Walter. My father trusted you. When he died, I kept you on because I thought you were part of the foundation of this house.”
“I am,” Walter said, his eyes narrowing slightly as he tried to gauge my temperature. “I’ve kept every roof tight and every security log clean.”
“Then explain to me why Russell Cole’s office has financial receipts tying your security division to a consulting firm owned by Tiffany’s shell company, dated three days before my wife was framed.”
Walter didn't flinch. Not a muscle in his weathered face twitched. That was his training—decades of handling family scandals for people whose last names carried weight in Davidson County. But his eyes drifted for a fraction of a second toward the French doors of the study.
“You’ve been talking to Russell,” Walter said softly.
“I didn't just talk to him. I bought his silence and his backup drives. Every single file, Walter. The ones about the hotel rooms with doctored time stamps. The ones about the sapphire necklace that you personally kept in the master safe until the night you planted it in Megan’s luggage.”
Walter sighed, a heavy, weary sound that had zero remorse in it. “Miss Tiffany was very clear about what the family needed, Mr. Garrett. You were a rising star in the logistics sector. You needed a woman who understood charity galas, board meetings, and high society. Megan… Megan was a lovely girl from a broken farm family out in Hickman County. She didn't fit the brand.”
“She was my wife.”
“She was an obstacle,” Walter corrected calmly. “And when she found out she was carrying your children while you were in Chicago closing the Tri-State freight deal, Miss Tiffany realized things were getting complicated. A pregnancy changes the math. So we adjusted the ledger.”
Before he could finish the sentence, my hand shot out, grabbing him by the lapel of his charcoal blazer and slamming him back against the thick wooden pillar of the porch. The impact rattled the carriage lamps.
“Where is my daughter?” I hissed, my face inches from his. “Hazel. The one who needed heart surgery. Where is she?”
May you like
Walter didn't struggle. He just looked at me with those cold, calculating eyes. “Ask Tiffany. She’s the one who handled the hospital placement in Memphis. But I’d be careful, Mr. Garrett. If you tear down this house, you’re going to find out that you aren't the only one buried in the basement.”
TITLE: The Glass Alibi
