Chapter 3 - The Ledger
The truth didn't come out in a dramatic spill of tears. It came out cold, precise, and detached—the way I had trained myself to analyze balance sheets when the world around me was breaking apart.
“I didn't know who Raymond really was when I met him,” I said, looking down at my hands. “I was twenty-four, working as a junior auditor for a regional firm in upstate New York. He was charming, attentive, and respected. Then we moved in together.”
The memories settled in the room like heavy dust.
“The first time he hit me, he brought me ice afterward and blamed the stress of a precinct investigation. The second time, he broke my collarbone because I asked why he had thirty thousand dollars in uncounted cash inside our linen closet.”
Vincent listened without interrupting, his face an unreadable mask.
“I tried to leave,” I continued. “He used the police database to trace every apartment I looked at. He called my family until my parents stopped answering my calls out of sheer terror. Then I found out what the cash was for.”
“The Callahan ledgers,” Vincent murmured.
“Yes,” I said. “Raymond wasn't just taking bribes. He was running the double-entry bookkeeping for Callahan’s human trafficking and narcotics routes through Canada. I was an auditor. I knew where the falsified shipping manifests were kept. One night, while he was asleep after drinking himself unconscious, I copied the encrypted hard drive to a flash drive and ran.”
“And Derek Lawson?” Vincent asked.
“Derek isn't Callahan’s man,” I said, shaking my head as the physical pain in my jaw flared. “Derek is just a local enforcer who runs illegal high-stakes poker games in Greenpoint. He came into the diner last week, recognized my face from a flyer Raymond put out in upstate underground channels offering fifty thousand dollars for my location, and tried to corner me to confirm it.”
“He didn't just want coffee,” Vincent realized, his jaw tightening slightly. “He came to collect a bounty.”
“He grabbed my wrist to force me into his car,” I whispered. “When I refused, he panicked and hit me.”
Vincent stood up slowly. He adjusted his cuffs, the heavy gold signet ring on his pinky finger catching the fluorescent hospital light.
“Derek Lawson thought he was playing a minor game,” Vincent said softly. “He brought Albany politics into my dining room.”
“What are you going to do to him?”
May you like
Vincent looked at me, a faint, cold tilt at the corner of his lips.
“I’m going to make sure he regrets every decision he’s made since he learned how to throw a punch.”
