Chapter 7 - The Secret Ledger and the Truth About Maya Harper
Inside the rusted skeleton of the terminal, the silence stretched thin and brittle before the heavy metal door of the loading office clicked open.
Victor Vance stepped out into the center of the concrete floor, his tactical rifle held loosely in one hand, a smug, untouchable grin plastered across his face.
“Alessandro,” Victor called out, his voice echoing off the corrugated iron walls.
“I was beginning to think you left your courage back in Chicago. Where’s the girl? I specifically told you to bring Grace Harper.”
Moretti stepped out from the shadows of the crane, his dark charcoal sweater blending seamlessly into the gloom, his face carved from unyielding granite.
“Grace stays where she’s safe,” Moretti said, his eyes locked onto Victor’s.
“You wanted me, Victor. Not her. Now talk. What do you know about Maya Harper?”
Victor chuckled, a dry, mocking sound.
“Maya was a bright girl,” Victor said, pacing slowly across the concrete.
“Too bright for her own good. She audited our freight manifests down in South Chicago and stumbled onto our secondary ledger—the one proving that Moretti shipping containers were moving unregistered pharmaceutical compounds for the cartel.”
Moretti’s eyes narrowed.
“I authorized no such shipments. That was a rogue operation run by the old Chicago board before I purged them.”
“True,” Victor admitted smoothly.
“Protocol dictated that Maya had to be silenced before she went to the feds. My men grabbed her outside her apartment eighteen months ago. They drove her out to an abandoned warehouse by the lake.”
Grace’s worst nightmare, spoken aloud in the cold dark.
Moretti’s grip on his Sig Sauer tightened until his knuckles turned stark white.
“Did you kill her?” Moretti asked, his voice dropping into a lethal, terrifying whisper.
“We didn't have to,” Victor smiled cruelly.
“Maya was smarter than we gave her credit for. Before my men could finish the job, she had already uploaded an encrypted copy of the master ledger to a decentralized cloud server, keyed to automatically release to every federal prosecutor in the country if her vital signs flatlined or if she didn't check in every thirty days.”
Moretti paused, the tactical puzzle finally snapping into place.
“That’s why she vanished,” Moretti realized aloud.
“She didn't die. She went into deep hiding, dropped off the grid, and let the world believe she was dead to keep the encryption lock active.”
“Bingo,” Victor mocked, raising his rifle slightly.
“And for eighteen months, we’ve been hunting her, trying to force her out of hiding to get the decryption key. But she was too careful. So when her older sister, Grace, turned up in Manhattan looking for answers... we decided to use bait.”
May you like
Victor raised his rifle completely, aiming it straight at Moretti’s chest.
“And what better bait than a little girl with blue eyes and a broken sugar cookie to lead Grace right into your mansion, giving us the ultimate leverage to break your empire, Alessandro?”
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