Chapter 4 - The Ledger Beneath the Floorboards
The second-floor office of the Gallow estate did not look like a mafia headquarters. It looked like the archive of a nineteenth-century shipping magnate.
Tall mahogany bookshelves lined the walls, filled with leather-bound ledgers, customs declarations from the Port of Chicago, and decades of financial reports. A massive oak desk sat beneath a row of arched windows that overlooked the crashing ocean waves below.
Paige sat at the desk, her right wrist wrapped in a fresh, stiff brace that Luca had brought her from a private clinic on Sunday.
She turned the page of a ledger dated 2018.
The numbers were staggering. Millions of dollars moving through dummy corporations with names like North Shore Import Export and Lake Michigan Logistics.
For three weeks, Paige had spent every Tuesday and Thursday evening buried in these books. She had discovered that Roman was right: his own men were systematically bleeding him dry. A regional manager named Miller had been inflating fuel costs by 30%, while another associate had been skimming from the union pension funds.
Roman had not flinched when Paige presented him with the first audit report two weeks ago. He had simply fired Miller before lunch and transferred the pension oversight directly to Paige’s control.
“You’re terrifying, do you know that?” Paige murmured to herself, tracing a column of figures with the rubber end of her pencil.
“Only to people who can’t do math.”
Paige jumped.
Roman stood in the doorway, holding two mugs of black coffee. He had discarded his suit jacket, wearing only a dark gray button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He walked over, placed one mug on the desk in front of her, and leaned against the edge of the mahogany wood.
“You’re working too late,” Roman said, glancing at the grandfather clock in the corner. It was past 10:00 p.m.
“Someone has to find where the rest of the missing union funds went,” Paige said, taking a sip of the coffee. It was hot, strong, and bitter—just the way she liked it. “Miller was skimming, but he didn't have the sophistication to set up the offshore accounts in the Caymans. There’s someone else.”
Roman’s expression darkened. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Who?”
“I’m still tracing the routing numbers. The signature on the secondary wire transfers belongs to a legal entity called Vane Holdings. It’s registered out of a post office box downtown.”
Roman reached out, tapping the edge of the ledger with his forefinger. “Vane is my uncle’s old lawyer. He died four years ago in the car bomb with my father and brothers.”
Paige froze. She looked up at Roman, her heart skipping a beat. “Are you saying someone is still using a dead man’s corporate identity?”
“I’m saying someone inside my own organization has been using my uncle’s ghost to embezzle from the family for five years,” Roman said quietly. The cold fury in his voice was palpable, radiating off him like heat from a furnace. “And they thought nobody would ever look back that far.”
Paige felt a chill run down her spine. She had spent the last month thinking of Roman as a cold, intimidating criminal boss. But looking at him now—standing in the dim light of his family’s archives, surrounded by the ghosts of the men who had been murdered—she saw something else.
He wasn't just maintaining an empire.
He was holding together the wreckage of a family that had been systematically torn apart.
“Let me see the Vane files from 2021,” Paige said softly, her professional instincts overriding her caution.
Roman looked down at her. For a fraction of a second, something warm and unreadable flickered in his dark eyes.
“You should go home, Paige,” he said. “It’s late.”
“I’m not leaving until I find out who’s signing those checks,” she insisted, pulling the next ledger toward her. “Unless, of course, you’re afraid of what I might find.”
May you like
Roman let out a low, gravelly chuckle.
“Paige,” he said, leaning down slightly so his face was level with hers. “The only thing I’m afraid of is that you’re going to run out of ledgers before I run out of enemies.”
