Chapter 5 - The Ledger’s Final Entry
My knees felt weak. Seeing him sitting there—surrounded by the wreckage of the life he had abandoned—washed away five years of hardened anger in a single, agonizing second.
"Dad," I breathed, taking a hesitant step forward into the cramped office.
Before my father could stand, the driver swept the perimeter of the room, checking the corners and the back exit before lowering his weapon. Marcus Vance clutched the edge of the metal desk with shaking, arthritic hands, his eyes darting frantically between me and the armed man standing in his doorway.
"You found me," my father whispered, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. "Silvio... I thought Silvio took care of everyone who knew about the books."
"Silvio isn't a problem anymore," I said, my voice trembling as I stopped a few feet from his desk. I looked down at the paperwork scattered in front of him. It wasn't just shipping manifests. It was a handwritten journal, filled with dates, names, and bank routing numbers. "Gabriel knows everything. He showed me the ledgers."
Marcus flinched as if he had been physically struck. "Costello? You went to Costello?"
"I work at Il Canto," I said, the bitter reality of my double life spilling out. "I served him dinner. I translated for his mother when she tried to warn him about Silvio poisoning his wine."
My father stared at me in stunned disbelief. A bitter, hollow laugh escaped his throat, turning immediately back into that ugly, rattling cough. "You translated for Beatrice... Of course. You always had your mother's ear for silence, and Leo's gift for the signs."
He reached out a trembling hand and pulled a thick manila folder from beneath a stack of old newspapers, sliding it across the desk toward me.
"If you've seen Costello's ledgers, then you know half the story," Marcus said, his voice dropping to a harsh, urgent whisper. "Silvio was laundering money through the union contracts, yes. But he didn't build that network alone. He was just a regional manager for a much larger syndicate based out of Milwaukee."
I looked down at the folder, but didn't touch it yet. "Why didn't you just come to the police? Or to Gabriel?"
"Because the man running the Milwaukee syndicate holds the life insurance policy on our entire family," Marcus said, his eyes locking onto mine with terrifying clarity. "When I tried to walk away five years ago, they didn't just threaten me with a gun. They proved they could reach anyone, anywhere—including a deaf boy in a special-needs academy across town."
The room went dead silent. The rain hammered relentlessly against the corrugated steel roof above us.
May you like
"Leo?" I whispered, the name freezing in my throat. "What does this have to do with Leo?"
"Why do you think the drunk driver who hit him two years ago was never found, Chloe?" Marcus said, a single tear cutting a clean path through the soot on his weathered cheek. "It wasn't an accident. It was a message. And the man who ordered it is coming here to Chicago tonight."
