Chapter 5 - The Boston LedgerThe word Boston dropped into the alleyway like a lead weight. Wren stared at Nathaniel, her mind racing to connect the pieces he was throwing at her feet.
"What are you talking about?" she demanded. "My father was a mechanic. He didn't have a vault. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment above a laundromat!"
"People who steal from the port syndicates don't hide their loot in savings accounts, Wren," Nathaniel said, his slate-gray eyes locking onto hers with intense focus. "They store it in physical assets—prototypes, digital codes, encrypted ledgers containing the shipping routes of every illegal cargo ring operating along the North Atlantic coast. Twelve years ago, before I caught up with him, your father secured that ledger inside a mechanical lockbox that only opens using a specific torque sequence—a sequence based on a custom lathe he built by hand."
"A lathe," Wren whispered. The memory hit her like a lightning bolt. Her father’s old workshop in the basement of their former home—the heavy iron machine he spent months welding, calibrating, and tinkering with late at night while she slept on a cot in the corner.
"The Boston Syndicate has spent the last month tearing apart old industrial sites in Rhode Island looking for that machine," Nathaniel continued, his voice dropping to a low warning. "They think it's still in your possession. And if they find you before I do, they won't offer you a blind date or pay off your hospital bills. They'll take everything, starting with your life."
"You expect me to believe that?" Wren laughed bitterly, though a cold knot of terror was tightening in her stomach. "You're telling me mobsters from Boston are hunting me for a machine my father built a decade ago?"
"I don't expect you to believe anything on my word," Nathaniel said calmly. He reached into his coat pocket once more and pulled out a small, encrypted tablet, holding it out toward her. "Look at the security camera footage from your apartment building taken thirty minutes ago."
Wren hesitated, then reached out and took the device. The screen lit up, showing the narrow hallway outside her second-floor apartment. Two unfamiliar men in heavy wool coats were standing outside her door, picking the lock with terrifying efficiency. One of them held a compact thermal scanner, pressing it against the wooden frame to check for body heat inside.
"They were there twenty minutes after your shift ended," Nathaniel said quietly. "If you had gone home like you were supposed to, you wouldn't be standing here right now."
The tablet felt like a block of ice in her hands. The reality of her situation crashed down around her with crushing force. Her home was compromised. Her past was a lie. And the only person standing between her and two professional enforcers from Boston was a shadowy Providence magnate who held all the cards.
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"Why help me?" Wren asked, her voice cracking slightly. "If the ledger is so valuable, why haven't you taken it yourself?"
Nathaniel looked down at Juno, who let out a low huff, before meeting Wren’s eyes directly. "Because the lockbox doesn't respond to my code, Wren. It responds to yours. Your father programmed the biological torque sequence into your DNA."
