Chapter 2 - The Blue Ledger
They didn't go to the police. If Silas Reed’s men could breach the District Attorney’s private chambers, the precinct was a death trap. Marcus drove them in a stolen impound vehicle to a bleak, windowless safe house he kept off the books in South Boston.
Rain lashed against the corrugated metal roof. Marcus sat at a dusty folding table, booting up an encrypted laptop. Lily sat on a cot nearby, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, watching him with wide, intelligent eyes.
"You know how to use that?" she asked quietly.
"I’ve spent my life hunting bad men, Lily," Marcus said, plugging the micro-SD card from Maya's tin into the drive. "Let's see what your mother died to protect."
The files decrypted, popping up on the screen in a cascade of spreadsheets and scanned documents. Marcus’s blood ran cold. The blue ledger. It wasn't just a list of drug deals. It was an entire shadow economy. There were offshore accounts, property deeds, and wire transfers.
But it was the names that made Marcus sick to his stomach.
Boston’s elite were on Silas Reed’s payroll. City councilmen. Two state senators. And most devastatingly, Captain Reynolds, the head of the city’s anti-corruption task force—Marcus's most trusted police liaison.
"He owns the city," Marcus whispered.
May you like
"Maya said the ledger was the key," Lily said, clutching the silver moon necklace around her neck. "She said if the right person saw it, the monsters would burn."
"They will," Marcus promised, racking the slide of the 9mm. "I'm going to light the match myself."
