Chapter 8 - The Crimson Ledger
By dawn, the blizzard had cleared, leaving the Chicago estate buried beneath a blinding blanket of pristine white snow. But inside the mansion, the atmosphere was thick with paranoia. The failed ambush at the docks had proved what I already knew: there was a mole inside the inner circle, feeding our movements directly to Viktor Vance and the Northside crew.
Gabriel had locked himself in his private downstairs study with his remaining capos, shutting down all communications and turning the estate into an armed fortress. No one went in; no one came out.
Which meant it was the perfect time for me to make my move.
While the guards were distracted patrolling the perimeter fence, I slipped down the back service stairs and headed straight for Leo Vain’s private administrative office on the ground floor. Leo was currently locked in the war room with Gabriel, which meant his desk—and his encrypted digital ledger—was completely unattended.
The brass handle of his office door was unlocked. I slipped inside, closing it silently behind me, and locked it with a soft click.
Leo’s office smelled of expensive leather, stale tobacco, and expensive bourbon. The mahogany desk was meticulously organized, every pen aligned, every document filed with clinical precision. But I wasn't looking for paper files. I was looking for the secondary financial records—the untraceable wire transfers that funded the Northside incursions.
I sat down in his leather chair, my left arm still throbbing faintly beneath my sweater, and booted up his desktop computer. It required a six-digit biometric and alphanumeric password, but Leo was arrogant. He used his mother’s birthday combined with his badge number—a combination I had overheard him rattle off to a corrupted bank teller months ago.
The screen flickered to life, displaying a labyrinth of encrypted spreadsheets and offshore accounts.
I clicked through the directories, my eyes scanning the transaction logs. There were payoffs to corrupt city inspectors, bribes for warehouse supervisors, and... payments to the Northside crew. Large, recurring sums wired directly to a shell company registered under a familiar name.
My breath caught in my throat.
The shell company wasn't owned by Viktor Vance. It was owned by a proxy tied directly to the shipping container yard where Gabriel had been ambushed three nights ago. And the authorization code for every single illegal transfer bore the digital signature of none other than Leo Vain.
He wasn't just leaking information. He was selling the entire syndicate out from under Gabriel to orchestrate a hostile takeover, using the turf war as a smokescreen to eliminate both Gabriel and Viktor in one fell swoop.
I grabbed a flash drive from my pocket, plugged it into the USB port, and began downloading the complete financial ledger. The progress bar crept across the screen at a agonizingly slow pace: *10%... 45%... 72%...*
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Suddenly, the heavy oak door handle turned.
Someone was trying to get in.
