Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the LedgerClara’s corpse was gone within ten minutes, cleaned away by men who left no trace that a murder had ever taken place inside the sanctuary of the Rosetti estate.
Dominic didn't sleep that night, and neither did I.
We sat in his massive, leather-lined study downstairs. A bottle of vintage scotch sat between us, untouched. Dominic was staring at a glowing laptop screen displaying endless cascades of financial ledgers, corporate shell companies, and overseas bank transfers.
“Clara didn’t act alone,” Dominic said, his voice grating like grinding stones. “That poison used on Lily, and the neurotoxin that killed Clara before she could talk—it belongs to a syndicate out of Montreal known as The Syndicate of the Seven. They haven't operated in Chicago for fifteen years.”
“Why come after a seven-year-old girl?” I asked, rubbing my aching chest where the tumor throbbed in time with my pulse.
Dominic leaned back, closing his eyes for a brief second. “Because Lily inherits more than my money when she turns eighteen. Her mother, Eva, was the sole heir to the maritime shipping routes connecting North America to Europe. Whoever controls Lily controls the entire import-export pipeline of the Midwest. Drug cartels, arms dealers, government officials—they all want a piece.”
He opened his eyes and pushed a physical, leather-bound notebook across the mahogany desk toward me.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Eva’s journal. She wrote it during her final months. She predicted the exact date of the betrayal, and she wrote down one name—a name I thought was a ghost story.” Dominic looked at me with intense, piercing scrutiny. “Julian, before you lived in an alley, who were you?”
I froze. The question hit me harder than Clara’s bullet. “I was an accountant. A forensic auditor for a major firm until I blew the whistle on embezzlement and they ruined me, stripped my license, and left me with nothing.”
“An accountant,” Dominic murmured, tapping his finger against the desk. “Or so you claim. Look at page forty-two of that journal.”
I opened the old, leather-bound book. The handwriting was elegant, slanted, and incredibly neat. On page forty-two, there was a detailed financial flow chart tracking millions of dollars funneled through shell companies directly linked to The Syndicate of the Seven.
And right at the center of the chart, highlighted in red ink, was my own legal birth name: Julian Vance.
My blood turned to ice. “I… I’ve never seen this before in my life. I didn’t know Eva.”
“Didn’t you?” Dominic stood up, his massive frame casting a shadow over me. He pulled a folded police report from his jacket pocket and dropped it onto the desk.
It was dated six years ago—the exact week my life fell apart.
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The report stated that my former boss, the man who framed me for embezzlement and destroyed my career, had been found dead in his office. The cause of death?
The exact same synthetic neurotoxin that had just killed Clara.
