Chapter 12 - The Father's Legacy
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I read the final page of my father's journal out loud, my voice echoing off the cold steel of the vault walls.
"They know I'm close. Reed signed the warrants allowing them to wiretap my offices. I have transferred the master physical ledger—the only complete record of their offshore routing network—out of the bank. Digital files can be erased, but ink and paper survive. If anything happens to me, Caroline must find it. The ledger is the head of the snake."
He hadn't left the most important piece of evidence in the bank. He had hidden it somewhere else, somewhere only I would theoretically be able to deduce.
"The physical ledger," Lena said, her eyes darting around the empty vault. "If Daniel’s syndicate is laundering billions, that ledger is their death warrant. It has every name, every bribe, every dirty politician."
"That's why Daniel smiled in the hospital," I realized, a sickening wave of clarity washing over me. "He wasn't smiling because Reed was dead. He was smiling because Reed's death meant the syndicate was taking command, and they still need the ledger. Daniel kept me alive for three years because he thought I knew where it was."
My cell phone, which I had grabbed from my purse before leaving the hospital, suddenly vibrated in my pocket.
It was an unknown number.
I answered it, putting it on speaker.
"Caroline," a frantic, weeping voice came through the line. It was Vivian. She was calling from the county jail holding cells. "You have to help me! You have to get me out of here!"
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"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't let you rot, Vivian," I said coldly.
"Because Daniel just posted bail," she sobbed. "And he just called me. He said I failed him. He said I'm a liability. Caroline, he's sending someone to kill me tonight!"
