Chapter 1 - The Confession of Numbers
Margot clutched the gray cardboard notebook against her chest as if it were a shield.
Raphael Santoro stood perfectly still, his dark eyes waiting patiently for her answer.
He had just asked her why she didn't go home, and she knew she had run out of acceptable lies.
"Seventy-four dollars and fifty cents," Margot whispered, the numbers tasting like ash on her tongue.
She explained that it was exactly what she had left in her bank account after paying her mother's medical facility.
Her temporary contract barely covered food, and a sudden rent increase had left her with absolutely nothing.
"I sleep down here because it is warm, and because nobody ever checks the basement," she confessed.
She expected him to call security immediately, to have her thrown out into the freezing Chicago night for trespassing.
Instead, Raphael slowly unbuttoned his heavy black overcoat and draped it gently over a nearby stack of boxes.
"You cataloged forty years of my family's records just to have an excuse to sleep on concrete?" he asked.
"I needed a reason to be here if I was caught," she repeated softly.
He walked past her, his expensive leather shoes making no sound on the dusty floor.
He pulled a specific box from the middle of row thirty-nine, exactly where she had noted the flickering light.
He opened the cardboard lid and pulled out a stack of yellowed ledgers.
"Did you read any of the files you indexed, Margot?" he asked, his voice suddenly void of any warmth.
"No, sir, I only logged the dates and the case numbers," she swore quickly.
Raphael turned around, holding a ledger from 1998 in his hand.
"Then you missed the detail that these particular boxes contain the original extortion records of the Romanov syndicate," he stated coldly.
Margot felt the blood completely drain from her face as she realized exactly what she had been sleeping next to.
She had spent three months cataloging the blackmail files of a rival mafia family.
"And unfortunately for you, my men caught a Romanov spy on the second floor ten minutes ago," Raphael continued.
May you like
He pulled a suppressed pistol from his suit jacket and aimed it directly at the floor between her feet.
"So tell me, Margot, are you really a homeless secretary, or are you the spy's accomplice?"
