Chapter 13 - The Broken Ledger
Gary, Indiana in late autumn was a graveyard of rusted steel and gray skies. The towering smokestacks of the abandoned iron works reached into the clouds like fractured bones.
Claire and I checked into a dilapidated motel off Route 12—the same stretch of highway where, six years ago, we had hid during the final days of the Syndicate war. The carpet smelled of damp wool and old tobacco, but it had concrete walls and two exits.
While Claire monitored our perimeter with a portable frequency scanner, I sat at the small laminate table with a burned laptop, tapping into an encrypted server I hadn't accessed since 2021.
"Anything?" Claire asked, bringing me a mug of black diner coffee.
"Dominic didn't just buy our location from Agent Marcus Vance," I said, pointing at the green code scrolling across the screen. "He bought the Phantom Ledger's master recovery key."
Claire froze. "I thought you destroyed that key."
"I destroyed the physical drive," I replied grimly. "But Marcus Vance was a federal agent with high-level clearance. When I turned over the evidence years ago, the Bureau created a shadow mirror drive in case I betrayed them. Marcus copied it before he went rogue."
"Why would Marcus betray the government after all these years?"
"Money," I said bitterly. "Or leverage. Dominic has a way of finding the one flaw in a man's life and driving a wedge into it until he cracks."
Suddenly, the satellite phone on the bed chimed with an incoming text message. A local Gary area code.
I picked it up. Attached was a video file.
I pressed play. The video showed a dark, windowless room built of corrugated tin. Tied to a metal chair in the center was Agent Marcus Vance. His face was battered, his suit torn, and his eyes wild with terror.
Standing behind him was Dominic Thorne, his scar-twisted face gleaming under a single hanging lightbulb.
"Hello, Adrian," Dominic's raspy voice echoed through the phone's small speaker. "Or should I call you David now? Such a sweet, simple name for a monster."
In the video, Dominic casually placed a hand on Marcus Vance's shoulder.
"Your federal guardian turned out to be quite cheap," Dominic sneered into the camera. "He sold your family's coordinates for two million dollars in crypto. But Marcus was stupid. He thought I'd let him walk away."
Dominic drew a silenced pistol and, without looking, fired a single round into Marcus Vance's chest. Claire gasped, turning her face away as the agent went limp.
"I have the full ledger now, Adrian," Dominic continued, stepping closer to the camera lens until his ruined eye filled the screen. "Every judge you paid, every cop you owned, every offshore account you thought was safe. By tomorrow morning, I release the file to every cartel and syndicate from New York to Bogota. They will know that David Miller is the man who put their bosses in prison. You won't just be running from me—you'll be running from every hitman on earth."
Dominic leaned in, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper.
May you like
"Unless you come to the Old Union Steel Mill tonight at midnight. Just you, Adrian. Bring the original decryption codes you kept in your head. Let's finish what we started in the fire."
The screen went black.
