Chapter 5 - THE SAFE HOUSE IN THE WOODS
The cabin sat at the end of a private logging road three miles outside of Stowe, Vermont. It belonged to an old uncle Vivien hadn't spoken to in a decade—a man who had spent his life off the grid, accumulating ghost assets and quiet distrust of the modern world before passing away quietly two winters ago.
Vivien backed the Forester into the shadowed lean-to behind the rotting timber structure, draping a heavy canvas tarp over the hood.
Inside, the air smelled of dust, old pine, and damp earth. She cracked open the windows, swept the dead leaves from the hearth, and built a roaring fire using dry kindling she found stacked by the woodstove. The warmth rushed through the room, casting dancing shadows against the log walls.
She placed the black case on the rough-hewn wooden kitchen table, popped the brass latches, and flipped it open.
Forty-seven pages of dense, immaculate handwriting. Every offshore account number in the Cayman Islands. Every dirty politician in Albany taking monthly envelopes. Every violent territorial dispute Matteo had arbitrated or incited over the last decade, complete with dates, names, and financial paper trails.
Matteo thought this book was his leverage. He thought it was the weapon he used to keep his empire secure. He never realized that Vivien was the one who had edited it, who had corrected his sloppy math, who had ensured that if the federal government ever came knocking, she had built enough plausible deniability to shield him—or, if necessary, bury him entirely.
She pulled out a red gel pen from her jacket pocket. She turned to page twelve—the page detailing Matteo’s primary money-laundering conduit through a real estate firm in Boston.
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Slowly, methodically, she drew a thick red line through the entire entry. Then she wrote a new instruction in the margin, her handwriting crisp and unwavering.
If Matteo wanted his empire back, he was going to have to play by her rules. And her first rule was simple: he had to find her first.
