Chapter 8 - The Ledger’s Final Page
Two days later, I was discharged from the hospital under strict medical orders, but instead of returning to the Lincoln Park apartment or the River North penthouse, Adrian brought us to a secluded stone estate overlooking Lake Geneva in Wisconsin—a place completely cut off from the syndicate politics of Chicago.
Yet peace was a luxury we couldn't afford.
While Adrian sat at a heavy oak desk in the study reviewing the corporate asset recovery documents, and my mother rested upstairs, I sat by the window watching the gray waves of the lake crash against the rocky shore. My phone buzzed on the side table. It was an encrypted text from Maya, my surgeon friend in Chicago who had agreed to check on my apartment.
Found something weird in your mail pile, Claire. A certified envelope postmarked two days ago from a Swiss notary public. No return address. Should I open it?
Open it and read me the contents, I replied immediately.
Two minutes later, my phone rang.
“Claire?” Maya’s voice came through the speaker, tight with confusion. “It’s a single sheet of paper from a Zurich bank. It says... ‘To the legal holder of the Svensson-Moretti proxy keys. The escrow account containing the personal liquid capital of the late patriarch, Giovanni Moretti, has been unlocked following the corporate verification of the primary bloodline heir.’”
My breath hitched. “How much?”
“It doesn't list a number,” Maya said. “It lists an address in downtown Chicago—a safety deposit vault at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange—and a code. Claire, what is this? Is this syndicate money?”
“It’s my grandfather’s private reserve,” I said, looking out at the lake as the realization washed over me. “The money Vincent claimed didn't exist. The money he killed for.”
Before I could answer, the study door opened, and Adrian walked in. He saw the tension in my face and stopped.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Vincent didn't just steal the corporate accounts,” I said, hanging up the phone and looking up at my ex-husband—the man who had divorced me to protect me, only to find out our lives were inextricably bound by blood, poison, and hidden gold. “He missed one account. A private vault at the Mercantile Exchange containing my grandfather’s personal reserve. And the bank just notified us that the primary heir has full legal access.”
Adrian walked over, pulling up a chair beside mine. He looked at me with a mixture of awe and fierce protection. “Vincent is sitting in a federal holding cell right now waiting for arraignment. But his loyalists—the captains who voted to dissolve the trust at the midnight sit-down—still control the docks. If they find out that private reserve exists, they’ll tear Chicago apart to get it.”
“Then we don't wait for them to find out,” I said, my voice hardening with a resolve I didn't know I possessed. “We go back to Chicago. Not to hide. Not to negotiate. We go to the Mercantile Exchange tomorrow morning, empty the vault, and use my grandfather’s capital to buy out every single captain on Vincent’s payroll.”
Adrian stared at me, a slow, dark smile touching his lips. “You really are a Moretti, Claire. Or worse... a Svensson.”
May you like
“I’m a mother,” I corrected him, thinking of our daughter sleeping peacefully upstairs. “And nobody touches my family.”
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