Chapter 4 - The Trap at Dawn“You think I killed him?” I stood up, knocking my chair backward, my heart hammering wildly against my ribs. “You think I’m some kind of hitman who forgot his own past?”
“I don’t know what you are, Julian,” Dominic said coldly, resting his hand on the butt of his hidden holster. “Maybe you’re an assassin with amnesia. Maybe you’re a long-con operative sent by Montreal to get inside my house. But here is the reality: if you walk out those gates right now, my snipers will put three bullets in your back before you reach the iron fence. If you stay, you help me find out who gave Clara that dart.”
The choices were brutally simple: die in the rain like a stray, or play a game of chess with the most dangerous mafia boss in America while carrying a ticking time bomb in my own chest.
“Give me the ledger,” I said, my voice steadying despite the terror gripping my lungs. “If I’m an accountant, let me do what I do best. Money leaves footprints, even when dead men walk.”
Dominic stared at me for a long, agonizing moment before a grim, humorless smile touched his lips. “Access granted. The terminal in the secure basement is yours. You have twelve hours before the board of directors arrives for an emergency meeting. If you can’t prove your innocence and find the leak by noon, I’ll feed you to the wolves myself.”
Down in the subterranean vault beneath the mansion, the air was cold and smelled of ozone and old paper. Row upon row of secure server racks hummed softly in the dark.
I sat down at the steel console, my fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard.
Hours bled together. Line by line, transaction by transaction, I stripped away the layers of offshore secrecy shielding The Syndicate of the Seven. They were moving massive amounts of capital through a shell corporation registered right here in Chicago under the name Veritas Holdings.
I traced the IP address of the server authorizing the transactions. It wasn't in Montreal. It wasn't overseas.
It was pinging from inside the mansion’s secure network.
Specifically, from the private guest wing on the third floor—the suite assigned to Dominic’s own younger brother, Marcus Rosetti.
Before I could download the data package, the screen flickered violently. A warning prompt flashed across the monitor in bright, pulsing red letters:
TRACE DETECTED. INITIATING PROTOCOL ZERO.
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Suddenly, the heavy steel security door behind me slammed shut with a deafening clank. The electronic locks engaged, and the ventilation vents overhead began hissing loudly, pumping a sweet, familiar scent into the room.
Gardenias.
