Chapter 4 - Numbers Written in Blood
Philip’s transfer was for two hundred fifty thousand dollars.
It had been routed through three consulting firms, converted into cryptocurrency, and transferred to an offshore account registered to a dead man.
To most investigators, the trail would have disappeared there.
To Anna, it looked like a confession written by someone trying too hard to hide.
She sat in the archive room at three in the morning, surrounded by printouts and empty coffee cups. Vincent had ordered her to rest twice. She had ignored him twice.
He remained across the table.
“You are staring at the same page,” he said.
“I am thinking.”
“You are falling asleep.”
“I can do both.”
“No.”
Anna looked up. “Do you command everyone this much?”
“Yes.”
“It must be exhausting.”
“Not for me.”
She pushed the transfer report toward him. “My father paid the account after leaving this estate. Mateo probably demanded proof of loyalty.”
“Or payment for removing you.”
The words chilled her.
“Removing me from the investigation?”
“From everything.”
Vincent said it without drama, which made it worse.
Anna leaned back. “You believe my father would agree to kill me?”
“I believe desperate men become capable of things they once considered impossible.”
“He is weak.”
“Weakness is not harmless.”
She thought of Philip raising his hand in the archive room. The hatred in his face when she chose the foundation over him.
Still, some stubborn part of her resisted.
“He is my father.”
Vincent’s expression softened by a fraction. “I know.”
That quiet understanding nearly broke her.
She stood and walked toward the cabinet.
“I need the shipping manifests from six months before the bombing.”
“You need sleep.”
“I need proof.”
“Anna.”
She turned.
Vincent had moved around the table. He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could smell cedar and soap.
“If Mateo ordered the bombing,” he said, “he killed Marco and four pedestrians. If Philip is helping him now, neither man will hesitate because you share blood.”
“You think I do not understand danger.”
“I think you understand numbers better than cruelty.”
“That is not an insult.”
“It was not intended as one.”
She folded her arms. “And what do you understand?”
“Cruelty.”
The answer hung between them.
Anna searched his face.
“Have you killed people?”
Vincent did not look away.
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Enough that a number would not make you feel safer.”
“Did they deserve it?”
“Some.”
“And the others?”
A shadow crossed his expression.
“I told myself they did.”
The honesty unsettled her.
He could have justified everything. Men like Philip always did.
Instead, Vincent offered no excuse.
“Why tell me that?” she asked.
“Because you required truth.”
“I required no lies.”
“That answer would become one if I let you imagine I am better than I am.”
Anna’s heart tightened painfully.
She had spent her life around men who polished their sins until they resembled virtues. Vincent wore his darkness without demanding she call it light.
It did not make him innocent.
But it made him real.
She returned to the table.
“Then help me find something worth saving.”
By dawn, they had reconstructed the company that supplied the delivery truck.
The business, Hudson Fleet Maintenance, had been created fourteen months before the bombing. Its registered owner was a former Moretti employee named Daniel Cross, who had supposedly died in a boating accident one week after the explosion.
No body had been recovered.
Anna compared payment dates with Moretti security schedules.
“The truck was serviced at a warehouse your organization controls,” she said.
Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Which warehouse?”
“Pier Seventeen.”
He became still.
“Mateo supervises Pier Seventeen,” Leo said from the doorway.
Vincent looked at him. “Seal it.”
Leo lifted his phone.
“No,” Anna said.
Both men turned toward her.
“If Mateo realizes we found the account, he will destroy everything.”
“He may already know,” Vincent replied.
“Then we give him a reason to believe we are looking somewhere else.”
Leo studied her. “You want to set a trap.”
“I want an audit.”
“In our world,” Vincent said, “those are often the same thing.”
They created a false lead suggesting that Anna had traced the missing foundation money to a property company in Boston. Leo deliberately mentioned the lead in front of two guards suspected of reporting to Mateo.
Within hours, Mateo left the estate for Manhattan.
A surveillance team followed him.
He did not go to Boston.
He went to Pier Seventeen.
At dusk, Vincent, Anna, Leo, and six trusted men entered the warehouse through a service tunnel.
The air smelled of salt, diesel, and rust. Rainwater dripped through cracks in the ceiling. Shipping containers formed narrow corridors under weak industrial lights.
Vincent wore a bulletproof vest beneath his coat.
Anna wore one over a black sweater, though it felt heavy and absurd.
“You stay beside Leo,” Vincent ordered.
“You said I was not a soldier.”
“You are not.”
“Then stop issuing battlefield commands.”
“This is a battlefield.”
“You also said no more lies. You did not mention you planned to come personally.”
“You would have objected.”
“That is why you did not mention it.”
“Yes.”
Anna glared at him.
Leo sighed. “Could you continue the marriage argument after we leave the ambush site?”
“We are not married,” they said together.
Leo looked toward the ceiling. “Saints preserve me.”
They reached the administrative office above the warehouse floor.
The door had been forced open.
Inside, files burned in a steel trash barrel.
One of Vincent’s men extinguished the flames.
Anna hurried to the desk. Most computer drives had been removed, but a small accounting terminal remained connected.
“Give me five minutes.”
“You have two,” Vincent said.
She inserted a recovery drive and searched deleted directories.
Footsteps echoed below.
Leo moved to the window.
“Three vehicles entering the loading bay.”
“Mateo?” Vincent asked.
“Cannot see.”
Anna found an encrypted folder.
The password field appeared.
She tried invoice numbers, company names, and dates associated with the bombing.
Nothing.
Then she remembered the routing code.
She entered it.
The folder opened.
Inside were photographs, payment records, and security schedules.
One photograph showed the delivery truck parked beside Vincent’s route.
Another showed Mateo meeting Daniel Cross after the supposed boating accident.
A third showed Philip Hastings passing an envelope to Cross two days earlier.
Anna’s blood went cold.
“He is alive.”
Gunfire erupted below.
Vincent drew his pistol.
“Copy everything,” he ordered.
Bullets shattered the office windows.
Leo returned fire.
Anna crouched beneath the desk while the computer processed the transfer.
Twelve percent.
Twenty-three.
Thirty-one.
The door burst inward.
A masked man entered.
Vincent fired once.
The man dropped.
Anna stared at the body.
She had never seen anyone die.
The world narrowed to the man’s boots, the blood spreading beneath his shoulder, and the strange soft sound he made while trying to breathe.
Vincent caught her chin and turned her face toward him.
“Look at me.”
Her breathing came too fast.
“Anna.”
She focused on his eyes.
“You are here,” he said. “Stay here.”
The transfer reached sixty percent.
More gunfire erupted in the hallway.
Leo shouted orders.
A bullet struck the desk, throwing splinters across Anna’s hair.
Vincent moved his wheelchair between her and the doorway.
“You cannot shield me with that chair,” she snapped.
“I can shield you with myself.”
“That is exactly what I mean.”
Seventy-eight percent.
A smoke grenade rolled into the room.
Leo kicked it back through the doorway.
It exploded outside, filling the hall with white smoke.
Ninety-one percent.
“Come on,” Anna whispered.
The computer chimed.
Transfer complete.
She pulled out the drive.
“Done!”
Leo grabbed the handles of Vincent’s chair.
“I can move myself,” Vincent growled.
“You can complain after we survive.”
They escaped through a rear stairwell equipped with a freight lift. Vincent’s men held the loading bay while Leo pushed the chair at a run and Anna followed.
Outside, rain poured across the pier.
A black SUV waited beside the water.
As they reached it, a shot cracked from the warehouse roof.
Vincent jerked.
Anna screamed.
Blood appeared along his side.
Leo fired upward while guards surrounded them.
“It grazed me,” Vincent said through clenched teeth.
Anna pressed both hands against the wound. “That is still blood.”
“I am familiar with it.”
“Be quiet.”
His eyes met hers.
Even in pain, something like amusement moved through them.
Then another vehicle roared from behind a row of containers.
A truck.
It accelerated directly toward them.
Leo dragged Anna aside. Two guards pulled Vincent’s chair toward the SUV.
The truck struck a stack of steel barrels, swerved, and crashed through the pier railing.
For one terrible second, its headlights shone beneath the dark water.
Then they vanished.
The driver’s door opened underwater.
A man struggled through.
Leo’s men pulled him onto the pier.
He coughed, rolled onto his back, and looked directly at Anna.
She recognized him from the photograph.
Daniel Cross.
The dead man.
He smiled through bloodied teeth.
“Your father says hello.”
Vincent’s hand closed around Anna’s wrist before she could move toward him.
“Do not give him what he wants.”
“What does he want?”
“To see you afraid.”
Anna looked down at Daniel Cross.
She was afraid.
But fear was no longer the strongest thing inside her.
“Tell my father,” she said, “that I found the numbers.”
Cross’s smile faded.
“And numbers,” Anna continued, “never stay buried.”
Back at the estate, a doctor treated Vincent’s wound in his private rooms.
The bullet had cut across his ribs without entering his body. He refused pain medication until the doctor threatened to sedate him.
Anna stood beside the window, still wearing the bloodstained vest.
“You should change,” Vincent said after the doctor left.
“So should you.”
“I have.”
She turned.
He wore a white shirt left open at the side to protect the bandage. Bruising covered his torso from the wheelchair restraints and the violent escape.
Anna’s anger returned.
“You placed yourself between me and a gunman.”
“Yes.”
“You could have died.”
“So could you.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one that matters.”
“No. It is not.”
She crossed the room.
“You do not get to decide your life is worth less because you can no longer walk.”
His face hardened.
“I did not say that.”
“You act like it.”
“You believe my chair made me reckless?”
“I believe surviving the bombing made you think you owe the dead your own destruction.”
Vincent’s eyes flashed.
“Do not speak about Marco.”
“Then stop trying to join him.”
The silence was explosive.
Anna’s heart pounded, but she refused to retreat.
Finally, Vincent looked away.
“When the truck came toward us,” he said, “I could not move fast enough.”
“You moved.”
“Leo moved me.”
“You fired. You protected everyone. You made decisions.”
“I was carried out.”
“You were wounded.”
“I was helpless.”
“No.” Anna knelt in front of him. “You were not in control. That is different.”
His breathing changed.
She placed her hands on his.
“You are allowed to hate what happened,” she said. “You are allowed to want your legs back. But do not confuse needing help with being helpless.”
Vincent looked at their joined hands.
No one had likely spoken to him that way since the bombing.
Perhaps no one had dared.
“You should fear me,” he murmured.
“I do.”
His gaze rose.
Anna continued, “But not for the reason you think.”
“What reason?”
“Because when I am with you, I forget that I should leave.”
Something broke in his expression.
He lifted one hand and touched her cheek.
This time he did not stop himself.
Neither did Anna.
Their kiss began carefully, almost formally, as if both expected the other to withdraw.
Then Vincent’s fingers slid into her hair.
Anna moved closer, feeling the restrained hunger in him, the months of pain and isolation locked beneath perfect control.
He pulled back first.
“You are vulnerable,” he said.
“So are you.”
“I could use that.”
“So could I.”
His forehead rested against hers.
“No contracts,” he whispered.
“No debts.”
“No obligation.”
Anna closed her eyes.
“Then kiss me again because you choose to.”
Vincent did.
And for the first time since entering the Moretti estate, Anna did not feel delivered, purchased, or trapped.
May you like
She felt wanted.
More dangerously, she wanted him too.
