Chapter 2 - The Stolen Ledger
The following night, after finishing my mother’s grueling shift and slipping back into the modest, tension-choked apartment in Brooklyn, I confronted Boyd about the missing Malone Estate access schedules I had found on the kitchen table. Boyd, reeking of cheap whiskey and smug arrogance, laughed off my threats, unaware that Rhett Malone’s security detail had already intercepted the copies he had tried to sell to a rival faction. When Rhett’s black town car materialized beneath the flickering streetlamp outside our building at 2:00 a.m., it wasn't police sirens that echoed through the stairwell, but the heavy, measured footsteps of men who settled scores with ledgers and silence. Rhett personally stepped into our cramped kitchen, looked at my mother’s bandaged ribs, and then turned his cold, calculating gaze onto Boyd. Without raising his voice, Rhett revealed that the documents Boyd had been leaking weren't just household schedules; they were financial blueprints mapping out the syndicate’s secondary logistics routes—routes that Boyd had been trading for gambling cash, completely oblivious to the fact that every digital trail led directly back to his doorstep.
