Chapter 13: Returning to the City with the Ledger
By dawn, the sleet had cleared, leaving the northern highways slick with black ice. We drove back into the city in silence, the leather-bound ledger resting securely on the floorboards beneath my feet. The gray concrete towers of the financial district rose before us like jagged teeth against a pale, washed-out sky. We bypassed my apartment—it was no longer safe, knowing what Viktor and his enforcers were capable of—and headed directly toward the warehouse district near the municipal harbor.
Alessandro parked the sedan in the underground garage of a secure commercial facility he owned, a fortress of reinforced concrete and closed-circuit cameras. We took the freight elevator up to a high-floor loft filled with drafting tables, leather armchairs, and walls lined with monitors displaying live feeds of the city streets.
"We need to trade the ledger before Viktor takes it by force," I said, laying the heavy book flat on a steel-framed table. "He won't stop until those pages are burned."
"He won't get the chance," Alessandro replied, walking over to a wet bar and pouring two cups of black coffee. He handed me one, his fingers brushing mine briefly. "Viktor operates through intermediaries. He cares about leverage, not loyalty. We give him a controlled piece of the puzzle—enough to satisfy his superiors in the ministry—while we keep the primary signature page that ties him directly to the falsification scheme."
I blew on the hot coffee, watching the steam rise in the harsh morning light. "And if he realizes we've split the evidence?"
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"Then we make sure he has bigger problems to worry about," Alessandro said with a cold, predatory smile that reminded me precisely who he was.
We spent the next three hours photographing every page of the registry, digitizing the handwritten entries, and cross-referencing the financial ministry stamps with corporate shell entities operating out of Marseille. By noon, we had constructed a digital dossier that could bring down half the administrative board in Bordeaux. Now came the hard part: setting up the summit. Alessandro picked up his encrypted burner phone, dialed a seven-digit number, and spoke only three words before hanging up: "The charity gala. Tonight."
