Chapter 9 - THE LEDGER
Z
The ledger contained enough secrets to destroy Chicago.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Detective Alvarez refused to let anyone touch it without gloves.
Inside were handwritten transaction records dating back nearly thirty years.
Politicians.
Police commanders.
Judges.
Union officials.
Developers.
Charity directors.
Millions of dollars moving through fake construction projects and nonprofit accounts.
Samuel Bennett had hidden it in his basement seventeen years earlier.
Which meant one thing.
He had found it before he died.
“Why didn’t he turn it in?” Norah asked.
Alvarez studied the dates.
“Maybe he was trying.”
Luca stood across the basement.
His attention had stopped on one page.
Norah noticed.
“What?”
He pointed.
Antonio Moretti.
A payment appeared beside his father’s name.
Two hundred fifty thousand dollars.
Norah’s stomach dropped.
Luca went silent.
Alvarez leaned closer.
“Could be a bribe.”
“No,” Luca said.
“How do you know?”
“My father wasn’t clean.”
The admission surprised Norah.
Luca continued.
“But he wasn’t for sale.”
Alvarez’s expression softened almost imperceptibly.
“Then what’s the payment?”
Norah looked at the account code.
“Can I see the previous pages?”
They traced the number.
Same account.
Different recipients.
Finally Norah found a notation.
WITNESS PROTECTION / EXIT FUNDS.
She looked up.
“Antonio was paying people to leave.”
Luca stared.
Norah read the entries.
“He was helping people escape the network.”
The two hundred fifty thousand had gone out, not in.
His father hadn’t been bribed.
He had been funding witnesses.
Luca stepped away.
For seventeen years, he had apparently lived with questions about the kind of man Antonio Moretti had been.
The answer was sitting in a dusty basement.
Norah understood something then.
Luca’s reputation wasn’t the whole man either.
Families created shadows longer than people deserved.
“What about Samuel?” she asked.
Alvarez searched.
Several entries contained SB.
Not payments.
Notes.
CASE MODIFICATIONS COMPLETE.
TRANSFER ROUTE MAPPED.
EVIDENCE COPIED.
Norah whispered, “They were working together.”
Luca looked at her.
“Our fathers.”
“Yes.”
Two men from very different worlds.
One carrying the Moretti name.
One building museum cases.
Both trying to dismantle the same machine.
A phone rang upstairs.
Margaret answered.
Then called down.
“Norah?”
Her voice sounded wrong.
Norah hurried upstairs.
Her mother held the receiver away from her ear.
“It’s for you.”
Norah took it.
“Hello?”
A woman spoke.
“You found the ledger.”
Norah recognized the voice from the few words Elena had spoken during installation.
“Elena.”
Luca came beside her.
Norah put the call on speaker.
“You attacked my mother?”
“No.”
“Someone did.”
“I know.”
“Then start explaining.”
Elena exhaled.
“Victoria took the records because she thought Samuel’s boxes contained the ledger.”
“Where is Victoria?”
“With me.”
Luca leaned toward the phone.
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Prove it.”
A pause.
Then Victoria’s voice.
“Norah?”
She sounded terrified.
“I’m sorry.”
Norah gripped the phone.
“For what?”
“For not listening to you about the pedestal.”
“That feels low on our list.”
Elena returned.
“Victoria isn’t part of this.”
Luca said, “Her family created it.”
“She discovered that two months ago.”
“Why didn’t she go to police?”
Elena laughed bitterly.
“Look at the names in the ledger and ask again.”
Alvarez’s expression hardened.
Elena continued.
“I stole the Belladonna because something is hidden inside the setting.”
Norah frowned.
“What?”
“A data key.”
Luca understood first.
“Modern records.”
“Yes. Arthur Hale kept paper until the nineties. Graham digitized everything afterward. The Belladonna was the bridge. Nobody searched it because everyone thought its value was the stone.”
“Where is the real diamond?” Alvarez asked.
“Safe.”
“Where are you?”
“No.”
Norah said, “Then why call?”
“Because somebody else knows you found the ledger.”
“How?”
“They’ve been watching Margaret’s house.”
Luca looked toward the windows.
His men immediately moved.
Elena’s voice changed.
“Norah, leave.”
A vehicle exploded outside.
The windows shook.
Margaret screamed.
Luca threw Norah behind the kitchen island as glass burst inward.
His men rushed toward the front.
Smoke rolled past the windows.
The SUV parked across the street was burning.
Not Luca’s.
A distraction.
The back door crashed open.
A masked man entered.
Norah saw the gun.
Luca moved before she could process it.
He hit the attacker’s wrist, drove him into the wall and sent the weapon skidding across the floor.
A second attacker came through the basement stairwell.
Alvarez drew her weapon.
“Police!”
The man ran.
Marco tackled him near the dining room.
Within thirty seconds, both attackers were restrained.
Norah’s mother was crying.
Norah was shaking.
Luca turned toward her.
“You hurt?”
“No.”
His hands came to her shoulders.
“Look at me.”
“I’m fine.”
“Norah.”
She looked.
His face was inches away.
There was blood along his cheek from broken glass.
Without thinking, she touched it.
Luca stopped.
Everything around them seemed to disappear.
Sirens approached.
Smoke filled the street.
Detective Alvarez shouted into her radio.
But Norah felt only the warmth of Luca’s skin beneath her fingertips.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered.
“It’s nothing.”
For the first time all night, he sounded uncertain.
Norah dropped her hand.
One of the captured men began laughing.
Alvarez turned.
“What’s funny?”
The attacker looked at Luca.
“You think you found the ledger first?”
Luca’s expression hardened.
The man smiled through blood.
“Arthur Hale has had a copy for seventeen years.”
Norah stared.
“Arthur Hale is dead.”
The man laughed again.
“No.”
May you like
Then he looked directly at Norah.
“He’s the one who hired you.”
