Chapter 4 - Blood on the Ledger
Ten minutes later, Alessandro returned.
His expression was grim, a streak of fresh dark blood smeared across the back of his right hand. He wasn't holding his gun anymore; instead, he was holding a shattered ceramic coffee mug and a small, high-frequency radio transmitter that had been wired into the underside of the archive desk.
“A bug,” Emma whispered, standing up as she recognized the blinking red LED light on the circuit board.
“A Class-4 military-grade transmitter,” Alessandro corrected, dropping the bug onto the steel desk with a sharp clink. “Someone has been listening to every keystroke you’ve made for the last six hours. They know we found the New York asset transfers.”
Emma’s heart skipped a beat. “Which means Dominic knows we’re onto him.”
“It means the clock just ran out,” Alessandro said, walking over to his desk and picking up his secure satellite phone. He dialed a two-digit extension. “Frank? Secure the perimeter. No one enters or leaves the Belmont estate without my direct authorization. If my brother tries to take a vehicle out of the garage, put a bullet in the engine block.”
“Alessandro,” Emma said, stepping closer to him, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts. “If Dominic realizes he’s cornered, he’s not going to wait for a board meeting. He’s going to make another move. And this time, he won’t use a slow-acting paralytic; he’ll use a bullet.”
Alessandro looked down at her. The harsh overhead light caught the hard lines of his face, softening only slightly as his dark eyes locked onto hers. He reached out, his thumb gently brushing a smudge of printer toner off her cheek—a small, incongruously tender gesture in the middle of a war zone.
“Let him try,” Alessandro murmured. “For the last six months, I’ve been sitting in a boardroom pretending to be a businessman while my family plotted to turn my empire into a graveyard. Tonight, the businessman is dead. The boss is back.”
He walked over to a heavy wall-mounted safe behind a portrait of his grandfather, punched in an eight-digit combination, and pulled out a heavy leather-bound ledger locked with a brass padlock. He tossed it onto the desk in front of her.
“What’s this?” Emma asked, picking it up.
“My father’s personal ledger,” Alessandro replied. “The one Dominic doesn't know exists. It contains the real names of every corrupt judge, compromised police captain, and New York broker on our payroll. If we’re going to burn my brother’s operation to the ground, we start by cutting off his political oxygen.”
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Emma opened the cover, her eyes widening as she scanned the handwritten names and offshore account numbers. “This is illegal. If I cross-reference this with the digital database, I’m accessory to half the racketeering charges in the tri-state area.”
“You’re already an accessory, Emma,” Alessandro smiled grimly. “You saved a dead man’s life. In my world, that makes you family whether you like it or not.”
