THE MAFIA BOSS’S LEDGER

I stared at the dead phone in my hand, my mind racing. A leather journal with my name on it? I had only been working for Matteo for twelve hours. There was no way Paul had a journal prepared with my name on it unless this whole thing had been orchestrated long before I ever poured that cup of coffee.

“What happened?” Celeste demanded, her hands gripping the edge of my desk. “Was that Paul?”

“It was Mercer,” I said, my voice eerily calm as my crisis-management instincts took over. “He has Paul. And he knows about Leo.”

Celeste let out a choked cry and sank to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest. “My baby. Oh god, my baby. Mercer will kill him just to hurt Matteo.”

“Stop,” I commanded. I knelt beside her. “Panic doesn't solve math problems, and it won't save your son. Mercer wants the flash drive Matteo gave me. He wants to meet at the old shipyard at midnight.”

“You can’t give it to him! If Mercer gets Matteo’s banking codes, he’ll drain the accounts and take over the port!”

“I know.” I stood up and paced the small office. “Mercer said Paul dropped a leather journal. He said it had my name on it.”

I walked over to the desk and pulled open the drawer. I looked at the bribe money, the silver rosary, and then my eyes fell on the heavy leather-bound notebook Matteo had left on the dining table last night—the one he had slipped the photo of Leo into. The one he had accidentally left behind, which I had put in my purse before coming to the warehouse.

I pulled it out.

“Celeste. Is this the journal?”

She looked up, her eyes widening. “Where did you get that? That’s Matteo’s private ledger.”

“He left it at the house last night.”

I opened the heavy cover. I hadn't looked past the photo of the boy earlier. Now, I flipped to the first page.

It wasn't a ledger of accounts. It was a diary. And the very first entry was dated four years ago.

I found her, the entry read in Matteo’s sharp handwriting. I found the diner where she works. Ellen.

I dropped the book on the desk like it was on fire.

“He’s been watching me for four years?” I whispered, a cold sweat breaking out on my neck. “Why?”

Celeste scrambled up and looked at the page. She flipped through the next few leaves. “Ellen... look at this.”

She pointed to a page halfway through the book. Pinned to the paper was a faded, yellowed clipping from a newspaper, dated seventeen years ago.

COMMERCIAL KITCHEN SUPPLIER INDICTED IN MASSIVE FRAUD SCHEME. WHISTLEBLOWER ACCOUNTANT FIRED.

It was my old boss. The man who sold the company after I caught him embezzling and tried to report it. He had ruined my career, blacklisted me in the industry, and forced me to work diner shifts to survive.

Beneath the clipping, Matteo had written: She has the mind for it. She caught the flaw we missed. She’s clean. When the time comes to purge the rot from my house, she will be the auditor.

“He didn't hire you by accident,” Celeste breathed. “The missing ninety thousand... Mercer’s contract dispute... Matteo orchestrated the whole dinner last night. He wanted you to catch the discrepancy. He used you to expose Paul and me.”

I felt a rush of anger so pure it cleared my head completely. I wasn't just a waitress who stumbled into a mafia dispute. I was a pawn Matteo had been grooming for years to clean up his mess.

“Fine,” I said, my voice hardening. “He wants an auditor? He’s going to get one.”

I sat at the computer. I didn't open the flash drive Matteo gave me. I opened a backdoor access portal I had quietly installed on Paul's terminal earlier that morning.

“What are you doing?” Celeste asked.

“Mercer thinks he has leverage because he knows where Leo is,” I said, my fingers flying across the keyboard. “But Mercer’s own money is tied up in the waterfront development project. The project Matteo controls.”

I bypassed Paul’s firewall—it was sloppy, arrogant work—and accessed the joint escrow account where Mercer had deposited his $600,000, along with millions more of his own syndicate’s money.

“I’m moving the money,” I said.

“You can’t do that! The bank will flag it!”

“Not if I route it through the same dummy corporations Paul used for the blackmail payments,” I said, feeling a grim satisfaction. “I’m taking Mercer’s entire operational fund and burying it in a shell company in the Cayman Islands. A shell company that only I have the password to.”

Celeste stared at me in awe. “You’re stealing from Thomas Mercer?”

“I’m seizing his assets,” I corrected. “Now we have leverage.”

I hit Execute. The screen flashed green. Forty million dollars vanished from Thomas Mercer’s reach.

I grabbed the flash drive, my purse, and Matteo’s journal.

“Where are we going?” Celeste asked.

“To get your son,” I said. “Before midnight.”

We slipped out the back of the warehouse, avoiding the security cameras I had mapped out that morning. We got into my beat-up Honda Civic.

“Give me the address of the facility,” I said, turning the key.

Celeste hesitated, then gave me an address in the remote hills of Elm Creek. Not the house Paul was blackmailing her for, but a private estate deep in the woods.

We drove in agonizing silence for two hours. As we pulled onto a dirt road flanked by towering pines, my headlights swept across the iron gates of the estate.

They were wide open.

“No,” Celeste gasped, throwing her door open before I even parked.

We ran up the gravel driveway. The front door of the house was smashed inward.

Inside, the house was ransacked. Furniture overturned, papers scattered.

“Leo!” Celeste screamed, tearing through the rooms. “Leo!”

I ran into what looked like a playroom. Toys were scattered everywhere. In the center of the room, lying on the rug, was a small, blue toy train.

I picked it up. It was warm.

Then I heard a sound behind me. A click of a gun hammer pulling back.

I turned slowly.

Standing in the doorway, holding a suppressed pistol, wasn't Thomas Mercer.