Chapter 5 - The Ledger of Blood
Damon’s eyes narrowed as I walked toward the long oak table. For a second, annoyance flared in his dark gaze—he wasn't used to being interrupted in his own war room. But as I held his stare, the annoyance melted into cautious curiosity.
"Adriana," Damon said softly, stepping away from the head of the table. "You should be resting."
"I spent six months resting, Damon," I said, stopping opposite the silver-haired capo who had argued against the war. "I spent six months listening to the walls of cheap apartments, terrified that every footstep was a killer."
I looked around the room at the seven powerful men who ruled Boston's underground. They looked at me with a mixture of pity and discomfort. To them, I was Eli’s tragic widow—a pregnant woman who needed to be tucked away in a safe house while the men handled the blood.
They didn't know what Eli had shared with me.
Eli hadn't just been a muscle man or a precinct leader. Eli was a logistics genius. He kept records. He knew that in the modern underworld, bullets were cheap, but data was fatal.
"You want to take Pier 4 back by force?" I asked Damon, pointing at the digital map behind him. "Victor Marquetti expects you to hit Pier 4. He has thirty armed men stationed inside the cold storage warehouse right now. If you send your men in there today, it will be a slaughter."
Damon’s eyebrows pulled together. "How could you possibly know what’s inside Pier 4?"
"Because Eli built the security system for that warehouse three years ago," I replied calmly. "And he kept a duplicate encrypted hard drive hid inside the frame of our bedroom mirror."
Silence fell over the library like a heavy wool blanket.
The silver-haired capo leaned forward, his eyes wide. "The mirror frame? The police searched your apartment top to bottom!"
"The police didn't know where to look," I said, a bitter smile touching my lips. "Eli knew that if anything happened to him, the people who killed him would look for financial ledgers. They wouldn't look for an encrypted storage drive hidden inside cheap wooden molding."
Damon stepped close to me, his broad body casting a long shadow over the table. "You have Eli's records?"
"I have everything," I said. "Every bribe Victor Marquetti paid to the port authority. Every illegal shipment of untaxed liquor and stolen luxury goods that passed through his hotels. Every offshore account he uses to pay off his corrupt police contacts."
I looked up into Damon’s dark eyes.
"Victor doesn't just run an empire, Damon. He runs a house of cards built on blackmail. If you strike him with guns, he uses his police commissioner to lock your men up. But if you hit him with his own ledger, he loses his protection before the sun goes down."
Damon stared at me for three long seconds. Slow realization washed over his face, followed by a fierce, dark respect that made my blood hum.
"Where is the drive?" Damon asked softly.
"It's in a safety deposit box at the Boston Merchants Bank on Boylston Street," I answered. "Eli put it in my maiden name—Adriana Voss. But to open the box, the bank requires two things."
"What two things?"
"My physical signature," I said, touching my pregnant belly. "And Eli’s watch."
Damon looked down at my hand, where the steel watch rested snugly against my wrist.
"They set up the lock together," I explained. "The watch has a micro-chip embedded inside the rear casing. It acts as a physical key for the bank's high-security vault."
Damon turned back to his capos. The hesitation in his posture was gone, replaced by a razor-sharp focus.
"Frank," Damon commanded. "Get three armored sedans ready. We leave for Boylston Street in twenty minutes."
"Damon, wait," Frank urged, standing up. "Taking her out into the open city right now is suicide! Victor’s men are looking for her everywhere after what happened at St. Cordova last night!"
Damon pulled a sleek black hand-gun from his shoulder holster, checking the magazine with a sharp, metallic clack.
"Then let them look," Damon said, his voice cold enough to freeze fire. "They wanted Eli’s widow. Today, they get her."
He turned back to me, extending his arm. "Are you ready, Adriana?"
May you like
I looked at the map of Boston on the wall. I looked at the watch on my wrist.
"I've been ready for six months," I said.
