Chapter 6 - The Name Inside the Ledger
Edmund turned.
Gabriel Costa stepped from behind the vault shelves.
Older.
Scarred.
Alive.
Edmund raised his gun.
Gabriel raised empty hands.
“If I wanted you dead, the ballroom would have been your funeral.”
“You aimed at my wife.”
“No.”
“Her name was on the rifle.”
“I put it there twelve years ago.”
Vivian stared.
“Why?”
Gabriel looked at her.
“Because your mother asked me to.”
Evelyn again.
Every road led back to her.
“The rifle was evidence,” Gabriel explained. “We marked everything connected to the operation using names instead of numbers.”
“Why mine?”
“Because you were the person Evelyn trusted us to remember.”
Edmund’s gun remained raised.
“You let me believe you were dead.”
“You let Vivian believe Evelyn was dead.”
That struck.
Neither brother moved.
Gabriel looked at the ledger.
“You found it.”
“Did you arrange the shooting?”
“I arranged the warning.”
“You fired into a room with Vivian in it.”
“I hired a marksman who could take the wings off a fly.”
“The chandelier nearly crushed her.”
“That wasn’t his shot.”
Silence.
Edmund lowered the weapon slightly.
“What?”
“My shooter fired at your sleeve.”
Vivian remembered.
The first loud shot had hit the chandelier.
But she had seen the dot on Edmund’s sleeve immediately beforehand.
Two shooters.
“There were two rifles,” she whispered.
Gabriel nodded.
“One was mine. One was the Architect’s.”
“Why warn us like that?”
“Because I couldn’t approach you.”
“You were inside the ballroom.”
“And so were at least six people working for him.”
Edmund looked at the ledger.
“Name.”
“I still don’t know.”
Vivian opened it.
Pages of dates.
Ships.
Amounts.
Initials.
She recognized judges, police officials and corporate accounts.
Then one set of initials repeated.
M.D.
Edmund saw them.
“Marco DeLuca.”
Vivian’s heart stopped.
“No.”
Marco was Edmund’s security chief.
The man who had been beside them since the shooting.
Gabriel nodded.
“He’s involved.”
Edmund immediately reached for his phone.
“No signal,” Gabriel said.
Edmund checked.
Nothing.
“Vault jammer.”
“Mine.”
“Turn it off.”
“Not until you listen.”
Gabriel opened another section.
“Marco is not the Architect.”
“Then who?”
“He reports to him.”
Vivian followed the payment trail.
M.D.
Then transfers to an account labeled SC-1.
Edmund stared.
“Salvatore Costa.”
“My father?”
Gabriel nodded.
“He built the network.”
Edmund looked at the photograph.
“Our father is dead.”
“So was I.”
The words hung there.
Gabriel explained.
Salvatore Costa had discovered that trafficking generated more money than weapons, gambling or protection rackets ever could.
He needed shipping.
The Morettis unknowingly provided it.
When Evelyn discovered the routes, Salvatore ordered her death.
Gabriel helped her escape.
Then Salvatore tried to kill Gabriel.
“But he died eight years ago,” Edmund said.
Gabriel shook his head.
“You saw a body?”
Edmund remembered a hospital room.
Sheets.
A doctor.
A closed coffin.
No.
He had not.
Vivian whispered, “He did the same thing twice.”
“Three times,” Gabriel said.
“Who was third?”
Gabriel looked directly at Victor.
“Your father.”
Vivian’s stomach dropped.
“Dad?”
“Victor was supposed to die tonight.”
The kidnapping.
The blood.
The missing car.
“Why?”
“Because Salvatore no longer needs him.”
Vivian gripped the ledger.
“Where is Salvatore?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do we find him?”
Gabriel pointed to the last page.
A shipping schedule.
One vessel was circled.
AURELIA.
Departure: midnight.
Pier Seven.
Vivian recognized the name.
“The company.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Salvatore named his flagship after it as a joke.”
Edmund’s face darkened.
“What’s aboard?”
“Evidence. Money. And probably people.”
Vivian closed the ledger.
“Then we stop it.”
“No,” Edmund said.
She turned.
“No?”
“You go somewhere safe.”
She laughed.
“Have you learned nothing about me?”
“I’ve learned exactly enough.”
“This concerns my mother, my father and my inheritance.”
“It concerns men who shoot through ballrooms.”
“And I already survived that.”
Gabriel almost smiled.
“She’s worse than Evelyn.”
“Don’t encourage her.”
Vivian looked at Edmund.
“You married me to protect me.”
“Yes.”
“Then protect me beside you.”
He stared at her.
“That isn’t what protection means.”
“It is now.”
Gabriel disabled the jammer.
Edmund’s phone exploded with notifications.
He read one.
Then another.
His face changed.
“What?”
He handed Vivian the phone.
Security footage from the Costa estate.
Marco DeLuca walking through the front doors.
Evelyn stood behind him.
A gun against her back.
Timestamp: two minutes ago.
Vivian called her mother.
No answer.
Then Marco called Edmund.
Edmund answered.
“Where is she?”
Marco laughed softly.
“Your father would like his ledger back.”
Edmund went pale.
“You’re lying.”
Another voice came through the phone.
Old.
Cold.
Familiar to Edmund.
“Hello, son.”
Edmund stopped breathing.
Salvatore Costa was alive.
May you like
And then the old man said the one sentence that changed everything.
“Bring me your wife.”
