Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the LedgerThe name on the wire transfer wasn't a corporate entity or an offshore nominee. It was signed in sharp, aggressive black ink: Arthur Vance.
My blood temperature plummeted. Arthur Vance. My uncle by blood, a man who had supposedly died in a private yacht explosion off the coast of Marseille six years ago—an accident that had conveniently wiped clean a multi-billion-dollar corporate investigation into international securities fraud.
"Where did you get this?" I demanded, slamming my palm down on the metal table.
Daniel flinched, leaning back as far as the handcuffs would allow. The smug satisfaction returned to his eyes, though it was masked by sheer terror. "Vance never died, Lena. People like him don’t die; they just change yachts. And when he needed a domestic front to launder foreign capital through real estate development, he used Voss Technologies. I wasn't just running a company—I was working for a ghost."
"That's impossible," I muttered, my mind racing through years of police reports, international maritime logs, and federal death certificates. "The FBI verified the dental records from the wreckage."
"Whose dental records do you think they planted?" Daniel hissed. "A Jane Doe fished out of the Mediterranean doesn't cost much when you own half the maritime inspectors in southern Europe. Arthur needed a network, and when Maya started poking around my home office looking for tax documents for our mortgage, she didn't just find my bank statements. She found Vance's ledger."
The pieces clicked into place with horrifying speed. Maya’s sudden anxiety attacks in the months leading up to her death. Her cryptic phone calls late at night, whispering about "bad people who aren't who they say they are." Her plea to me: “Lena, if anything happens to me, don’t trust the local police. Look in the attic floorboards at our old family house.”
I hadn't looked in the attic floorboards yet. I had been too focused on Daniel.
"You killed her because she found Arthur," I said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
"I didn't want her dead!" Daniel yelled, the veneer finally cracking entirely, tears springing to his eyes not from grief, but from self-preservation. "Arthur gave me an ultimatum. Either she stays quiet, or we disappear—permanently. He said family loyalty doesn't survive a federal indictment. I tried to stall him. I swear to God, Lena, I tried to stall him!"
"You didn't stall anyone. You traded your wife and your unborn child for a seat at a table of monsters," I stood up so violently my chair scraped backward with a screeching metal sound.
I turned toward the observation mirror, knowing Agent Miller was standing on the other side recording every second. I keyed my lapel mic. "Miller. Lock down Daniel Voss’s isolation cell. No visitors, no phone calls, no outside contact. And pull up every property deed registered under Aegis Prime in the tri-state area."
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"Copy that, Voss," Miller’s voice crackled through my earpiece. "Where are you going?"
"To check our family's attic."
