I Married a Billionaire in a Coma—Then He Woke and Warned Me Not to Trust Jason

Chapter 05 - The Empty Library

An empty library is a kind of murder.

I stood there in my wedding dress, staring through the glass at bare shelves where hundreds of books had left pale rectangles in the dust. The room looked robbed of memory. Even the ladder on the brass rail had been removed, leaving nothing but a track that circled the walls like a scar.

Jason had cleared it.

Of course he had.

Men who stole money did not leave ledgers in libraries once they knew someone was awake enough to remember hiding them.

My first instinct was to run back to Ethan. My second was to sit on the floor and cry until someone found me. But my mother’s voice came to me, sharp as a bell behind the bakery counter.

Claire, if the drawer is empty, look under the drawer.

She had said it whenever a supplier claimed an order had never arrived, whenever a bride swore she paid a deposit she had not paid, whenever my father lost the same tape dispenser three times a week.

Look under the drawer.

I tried the brass key Mae had given me.

The library door opened.

The air inside smelled like polish and emptiness. I stepped in, lifting my dress so it would not catch on the threshold. The room was long and high, with green walls, two fireplaces, and tall windows overlooking a courtyard fountain. The missing books made the space feel indecent, like a person stripped in public.

I searched fast.

Desk drawers. Empty.

Cabinets. Empty.

Behind the paintings. Nothing.

The fireplace ashes were cold and recently disturbed. I knelt, not caring what soot did to the lace, and sifted through gray flakes with my fingertips. No metal. No paper. Only the soft black remains of something that had once mattered.

I sat back on my heels.

“Think,” I whispered.

Ethan had written: Blue ledger. Library.

Not bookshelf. Not desk. Library.

I stood and turned slowly in the center of the room.

Blue.

There was nothing blue in the room except the darkening sky beyond the windows. Green walls. Brown floors. Cream curtains. Brass fixtures.

Then I saw it.

Above the far fireplace hung a portrait of Ethan’s grandfather, Walter Thornton, a hard-faced man in a navy suit seated beside a globe.

The globe was blue.

I crossed the room, heart hammering. The painting was too large to lift, but the frame shifted when I touched it. Behind it was not a safe, exactly. It was an old dumbwaiter door, painted the same green as the wall.

The brass key fit.

Inside sat a metal box the size of a cake pan.

And inside that box was a blue leather ledger.

My hands shook so badly I almost dropped it.

The first pages were handwritten in Ethan’s neat, slanted script. Dates. Amounts. Names of shell companies. Initials beside board members. Photocopies folded into the back pocket. A flash drive taped under the cover.

But there was something else.

A cream envelope with my name on it.

Claire Mason.

I opened it.

The letter was dated the morning of Ethan’s crash.

Claire,

You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you. Lemon tarts. Flour on your sleeve. The way you corrected a man twice your net worth when he called your father “the help.”

I looked into the bakery situation. Your loan was not merely unlucky. Someone purchased it and raised the pressure. I believe it was done through channels connected to my family.

I’m sorry. I intend to fix it today.

If anything happens to me, do not trust Jason.

I stopped reading because the words doubled.

Do not trust Jason.

He had been trying to warn me before he ever had the chance to know me.

The library door creaked.

I shoved the ledger behind my back.

A woman stood in the doorway.

Not Mae. Not a maid. She was tall, thin, maybe in her late fifties, wearing a cream silk robe over pajamas and holding a cane she clearly did not need. Her silver-blonde hair fell to her shoulders in a perfect wave.

I knew her face from magazines.

Vivian Thornton.

Ethan and Jason’s mother.

I had been told she was in Switzerland recovering from grief.

She looked at my ruined wedding dress, the soot on my knees, the envelope in my hand.

Then she closed the library door behind her.

“Well,” she said. “Jason has made a mess of things, hasn’t he?”

I did not move.

“Are you going to scream?” she asked.

“Would anyone come?”

That earned the smallest smile. “No. Sensible answer.”

She crossed the room slowly, cane tapping for drama more than support. Her perfume smelled expensive and cold. I backed up until my hip hit the desk.

“You’re Vivian Thornton.”

“I was, before grief made me inconvenient. Now Jason prefers to describe me as fragile.”

“You’re his mother.”

“I am Ethan’s mother.” Her eyes sharpened. “Jason is my stepson.”

There was another crack in the story I had been given.

She looked at the ledger behind my back. “You found it.”

“Are you here to take it?”

“My dear, if I wanted to take it, I would have brought someone larger than a cane.”

I did not laugh.

Vivian sighed. “Ethan trusted Mae. Ethan distrusted Jason. Ethan underestimated how many people profit from calling a woman unstable.”

“Why were you hiding?”

“I wasn’t hiding. I was managed. Medication, private doctors, locked calendars, a very tasteful prison with excellent linens.” Her mouth tightened. “Jason learned from his father. Men in this family have always understood that a woman with money and grief can be made to look unwell.”

Her voice did not tremble, but something old and bruised lived underneath it.

“My son woke up tonight,” she said.

I forgot to breathe.

“You know?”

“Mae sent one message before Jason cut the internal line. Two words. He’s back.”

The cane tapped once.

“I have waited nine months to hear those words.”

She looked toward the ceiling, toward the bedroom above us. For the first time, Vivian Thornton did not look like a magazine woman. She looked like a mother afraid to run because running might break hope.

Then her face changed.

“Give me the ledger.”

“No.”

Her eyes came back to mine.

“I don’t know you,” I said. “And everyone in this house has asked me for something since I walked in.”

Vivian studied me. Then she nodded, as if I had passed a test she wished life had not required.

“Good.”

She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out my purse.

I stared.

“I believe this belongs to you.”

I took it with a sound that was embarrassingly close to a sob. My phone was inside. So was my wallet. So was the little photo of my parents taped into the inner pocket.

“Call the police,” I said.

“Not local,” Vivian replied. “Jason golfs with local. Call this number.”

She handed me a card with no name, only a handwritten phone number.

“Who is it?”

“The federal investigator Ethan was driving to meet.”

My thumb hovered over the phone screen.

From above us came a crash.

Then Mae’s voice, muffled and furious.

“Don’t you dare touch him!”

Vivian’s face drained of color.

I hit call.

Before the first ring finished, Jason’s voice came through the library speakers.