Chapter 3 - The Ledger in the Wall
The silence that followed was suffocating. Nathan didn't deny it. The realization that Dominic had been steps ahead of him the entire time settled over his face like an iron shroud.
"You always were too smart for your own good, Dom," Nathan said, his voice dropping all pretense of brotherhood. He slowly reached toward the waistband of his trousers.
Before his fingers could even touch the grip of his hidden weapon, the sharp, distinctive click of three semi-automatic slides echoing in the room stopped him. Daniel, Marcus, and two other senior guards had their weapons trained directly on his chest.
"Don't do it, Nathan," Marcus said, his voice tight with anger. "We took an oath to the family. Not to you."
"Disarm him," Dominic ordered.
Daniel stepped forward, roughly pulling a compact 9mm pistol from Nathan’s belt and throwing it onto the desk. Nathan didn't resist. He just stared at Dominic with a cold, hateful glare.
"You think you’ve won because you caught me skimming?" Nathan sneered. "You don't know the half of it. The federal grand jury in Manhattan already has the secondary ledger. The one detailing the shipping manifests from 2024. Claire delivered it to an intermediary last Tuesday. If I don't check in with my contact by noon today, the FBI breaches your front gates with a warrant that will strip this house to the stone."
Claire let out a small, terrified squeak, realizing she had just been named as a federal co-conspirator in front of the most powerful man on the East Coast.
Dominic didn't look panicked. He slowly opened the folder on his desk, revealing a stack of printed emails and bank statements.
"The intermediary you used is named Thomas Vance," Dominic said, reading from the top sheet. "A dirty consultant who specializes in corporate espionage. He didn't give the ledger to the FBI, Nathan. He sold it back to me last night for two million dollars cash."
Nathan’s jaw went slack. His fingers began to tremble slightly against the armrest of the chair. "You're bluffing."
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"I don't bluff about my life, Nathan. And I certainly don't bluff about the safety of the people who keep this house running," Dominic said. He stood up, walking around the desk until he was standing right in front of his former brother. "You thought Mia was just a maid. You thought because she cleaned your mud off the floors, she didn't see the world around her. But Mia Carter has a degree in business administration from Penn State. She took this job because she needed a safe place to raise her daughter away from a bad marriage."
Dominic leaned in close. "She didn't just find your offshore numbers, Nathan. She’s the one who found the tracking software you installed on my personal vehicle. She’s the one who warned me to check the Newark books before I left for Atlantic City. That’s why you locked her up. Not because she was a maid who saw too much, but because she was the only person in this house who was actually loyal to me."
