Chapter 5 - THE FIRST LEDGERThe desk assigned to Alina was not located in some grand executive suite with a view of the skyline. It was tucked away in a converted walk-in vault on the subterranean level of the Oak Street brownstone—a windowless, soundproofed room lined with steel filing cabinets, three computer monitors glowing with real-time financial feeds, and an espresso machine that hummed quietly in the corner.
For three days, Alina didn't see the sun.
She lived on double-shot espressos, takeout sushi delivered by silent couriers, and the endless, dizzying labyrinth of corporate spreadsheets, tax filings, and shell company registries that Julian had dumped onto her desk.
It was staggering work. Whoever was siphoning information out of Moretti Logistics wasn't a clumsy accountant or a low-level clerk. They were operating with surgical precision, embedding fraudulent transactions inside legitimate real estate acquisitions across Cook County, disguising them as routine operational expenses.
At 3:15 AM on Friday morning, Alina rubbed her burning eyes, pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and leaned back in her ergonomic leather chair.
She had found it.
Buried deep within the third-tier subsidiary ledgers of a freight-forwarding firm called North Star Holdings, there was an anomaly. Every fourteen days, precisely at midnight, a transfer of exactly forty-eight thousand dollars was routed through an intermediary account in Zurich, landing in a personal brokerage account registered under a blind trust.
And the digital signature authorizing the transfer?
Alina zoomed in on the metadata of the PDF file displayed on her central monitor. The routing code pointed to an internal terminal located on the second floor of the Oak Street brownstone.
The private residential terminal.
The door to the vault swung open silently, and Christian stepped inside. He wore a dark cashmere sweater, his sleeves pushed up, holding two paper cups of black coffee. He set one down on the edge of Alina’s desk without a word, his dark eyes scanning the glowing monitors.
"You haven't slept in thirty-six hours," he noted, his voice low.
"I found the leak," Alina said, her voice raspy from exhaustion. She didn't touch the coffee; instead, she turned her monitor toward him, pointing a trembling finger at the highlighted line of code.
Christian leaned over her shoulder, his gaze fixing on the screen. The scent of cedar and expensive soap drifted off him, filling the confined space.
"North Star Holdings," Christian murmured, the name tasting like poison on his tongue. "That's a front company for Marcus Vance."
Alina blinked, turning her head to look up at him. "Vance? Your chief emissary? Your right-hand man?"
"My father's right-hand man, inherited when I took over the portfolio," Christian corrected, his jaw tightening so hard the muscle ticked beneath his skin. "He manages our municipal compliance and liaison relations. He has access to every encrypted terminal in this house."
"He’s not just leaking to the feds, Mr. Moretti," Alina said, her pulse racing. "He’s selling your entire logistics infrastructure piece by piece to an outside syndicate. Look at the timestamp of these transfers. They correlate directly with every major federal subpoena your legal team received over the last six months."
Christian straightened up slowly. The temperature in the vault seemed to drop ten degrees. There was no rage in his expression—no shouting, no explosive fury. Just a terrifying, glacial stillness that was far more dangerous than any outburst.
"He's been positioning himself to take over the board when the RICO indictment drops," Christian said softly, more to himself than to her. "He thought he could bleed the family dry from the inside out."
He looked back down at Alina, his dark eyes softening just a fraction as they met hers.
"You found in three days what my internal audit team missed in six months," Christian said. "Alina... you are terrifying."
Alina let out a breath she didn't realize she’d been holding. "What do we do now? Do we hand him over to your security team?"
"No," Christian said, a cold, sharp edge cutting into his tone. "If we move openly, Vance will burn the servers, drain the accounts, and disappear behind a wall of federal protection before sunrise. We need to draw him out."
"How?"
May you like
Christian leaned down, placing both hands on the arms of her chair, trapping her gently in the circle of his space. His face was inches from hers.
"We throw a dinner party," Christian whispered. "Tomorrow night. Right here in this house. And you, Alina... you are going to be the guest of honor."
