Chapter 7 - The Hidden Ledger
The next morning, the war room at the Moretti estate was bustling with armed men, maps of the city spread across a massive mahogany table.
Mara stood beside Adrian, refusing to be left out of the planning while men risked their lives on her behalf.
“Blake is using the police to raid my legitimate businesses, hoping to freeze my assets and force me to hand you over,” Adrian explained to his lieutenants.
Mara stared at the map, tracing the line of Pratt Street with her index finger as a sudden memory flashed through her mind.
“He doesn't care about me,” Mara said suddenly, drawing the attention of every hardened killer in the room.
Adrian frowned, stepping closer to her.
“What do you mean, mia vita?” he asked softly.
“Blake used to panic whenever I cleaned the bedroom, specifically the bottom drawer of my grandmother's old dresser,” she recalled vividly.
She looked up at Adrian, her eyes wide with revelation.
“He hid a small black leather book inside my grandmother’s vintage sewing kit, buried under spools of thread,” she explained.
One of Adrian’s top men, Elias, let out a low whistle.
“The cartel’s master ledger,” Elias muttered in disbelief. “If he hid his boss's money trails in your apartment, he isn't trying to get you back for love.”
“He is trying to get me back so I don't accidentally find the book and destroy his entire criminal network,” Mara finished the thought.
Adrian’s eyes gleamed with a dangerous, predatory light.
“If we get that ledger, we don't just destroy Blake,” Adrian realized. “We hand his head on a silver platter to his own bosses.”
That night, under the cover of a freezing rainstorm, Adrian’s elite strike team infiltrated apartment 7C.
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They bypassed Blake’s new alarm system in seconds, slipping into the bedroom while Blake slept heavily under the influence of painkillers.
By dawn, the black leather book was sitting on Adrian’s desk, containing enough financial evidence to put an entire cartel behind bars.
