Chapter 8 - The Ghost Ledger
The room seemed to spin on its axis.
My father? The quiet, exhausted man who had coughed blood into a handkerchief every night while trying to pay off our grocery bills—he was the architect behind the Moretti syndicate's financial empire?
“You’re lying,” I whispered, pulling my wrist away from Eleanor’s grip. “My father never touched syndicate money. He spent his whole life working himself to death just to keep us afloat!”
“He kept you afloat with dirty money, Aurora!” Eleanor snapped back, her voice rising before she caught herself and dropped it to an intense, desperate whisper. “Why do you think Regina was able to gamble away fifty thousand dollars without blinking? Why do you think your tuition, your clothes, your life in Brooklyn was funded while your father was supposedly a simple clerk? He skimmed the top of the master ledger before he disappeared, and he hid the encryption keys inside the only thing he left behind to protect you.”
I stared at her, my mind flashing back to the old, battered leather briefcase my father had given me on his deathbed—a briefcase I had pawned months ago to a second-hand dealer in Queens just to pay for a week in a cheap motel.
A cold wave of horror washed over me.
“The briefcase,” I breathed out.
“Where is it?” Eleanor demanded, grabbing my shoulders. “If those men find it before Michael does, they won't just kill you—they’ll execute every single member of this family to wipe the slate clean.”
Before I could answer, a deafening explosion rocked the southern wing of the mansion.
The floor beneath our feet shuddered violently, sending a wave of thick, acrid smoke billowing up through the hallway floorboards. The heavy oak door of my suite rattled in its frame as heavy boots pounded up the third-floor staircase, moving straight toward us with terrifying speed.
“They’re in the house,” Eleanor whispered, her face draining of all color as she backed away toward the window.
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I didn't hesitate. I sprinted across the dark room, grabbed the heavy poker iron from the fireplace hearth, and positioned myself squarely beside the door frame just as the lock began to melt under the heat of a tactical cutting torch.
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