Chapter 4 - The Ghost in the Ledger
The realization hit the room like a physical shockwave.
Matteo immediately stepped between Gabriel and the prisoner, his face grim. "Gabriel, we need to secure this drive right now. If Apex Holdings is involved, this isn't just a physical breach. It’s a corporate decapitation strategy."
Gabriel slowly pulled the knife from the table, wiping the tip on Vance’s collar before handing it back to Matteo. He did not look at the terrified electrician again.
"Teresa," Gabriel ordered. "Take Vance to the secondary holding facility in Lake Forest. Put him in a room with no windows, no phones, and no access to counsel until I tell you otherwise."
"And his mother?" Teresa asked.
"Send a private medical vehicle to pick her up from her appointment," Gabriel said. "Place her in a private suite at our facility in Evanston. Treat her well, but keep her offline."
He turned to Olivia. "You and I are going to your house."
Olivia looked at him, startled. "My house? My house is two blocks away!"
"Precisely," Gabriel said. "If your late husband worked for Apex, and you found the relay in my house, there are no coincidences left in this story."
Five minutes later, Gabriel, Matteo, and Olivia walked up the front steps of a small, charming yellow brick house two streets over. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the morning sky a pale, icy blue.
Inside, Olivia’s mother, Martha, a quiet woman with silver hair and kind, worried eyes, sat in the living room holding Lily on her lap. Two of Gabriel’s plainclothes guards stood discreetly near the kitchen archway, holding cups of coffee.
When Lily saw her mother, she scrambled off her grandmother’s lap and ran across the rug. "Mommy!"
Olivia dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms tightly around her daughter, burying her face in the girl’s soft, shampoo-scented hair. "Hey, baby. Hey... are you okay?"
"The nice men said you were helping them fix a big problem at work," Lily said, looking up with wide brown eyes. She then looked over Olivia’s shoulder at Gabriel, who stood in the entryway, his tall frame filling the doorway. "Is he the boss?"
Gabriel looked down at the little girl. The cold, lethal intensity that had defined him in the kitchen two blocks away seemed to soften, if only by a fraction. He stepped forward, lowering himself slightly.
"Hello, Lily," Gabriel said, his voice unusually gentle. "Yes. Your mother is helping me fix something very important."
Martha stood up, looking nervously at Gabriel’s tailored suit and the imposing presence of Matteo standing behind him. "Olivia... what’s going on? Who are these people?"
"It’s okay, Mom," Olivia said, standing up and handing Lily back to her mother. "Mom, I need you to take Lily upstairs to her room for a few minutes. I need to find Thomas’s old work files."
Martha’s eyes widened slightly. "Thomas? His files are in the attic trunk. They’ve been up there since the funeral three years ago."
Ten minutes later, Olivia stood in the small, dust-scented attic beneath the rafters of her family home. Gabriel stood beside her, his head ducked to avoid the low wooden beams, watching as she unlocked a heavy brass trunk with a small key from her ring.
Inside the trunk lay the careful remnants of Thomas Carter’s life—his university diplomas, his framed award certificates from Apex Holdings, his old wristwatches, and three thick black leather notebooks.
Thomas had been a meticulous man, an auditor who believed that paper was the only medium that couldn't be altered by a remote keystroke.
Olivia pulled out the top notebook, opening it to the last entries written in Thomas’s neat, slanted cursive from November 2023—one month before he suffered a fatal heart attack while driving home from the office.
"Thomas was auditing the trust accounts for Apex," Olivia explained, turning the yellowed pages. "He told me he had found a series of phantom accounts that were being used to purchase short-position options against Duca Enterprises stock."
Gabriel reached out, his long fingers gently taking the notebook from her hands. He flipped back thirty pages, scanning the columns of numbers and account codes Thomas had recorded.
"These aren't just option accounts," Gabriel said, his eyes narrowing as he read the ledger. "These are liquidation triggers."
"What does that mean?" Olivia asked.
"It means someone inside Apex Holdings was preparing for my family’s empire to fall apart," Gabriel said. "They set up accounts designed to automatically buy up controlling shares of Duca Enterprises at pennies on the dollar the moment a major crisis occurred."
He stopped at a page dated November 14, 2023.
In Thomas’s handwriting, three names were circled in red ink:
Julian Duca (Personal Trust)
Marcus Vance (Apex Senior Partner)
Project 'Blackwood'
Gabriel stared at the third name. "Project Blackwood."
"You know what that is?" Olivia asked.
"Blackwood was the codename for our private deep-water port development project in Canada," Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a dangerous whisper. "A $2 billion infrastructure project that only four people in the world knew about. Julian, myself, our lead attorney... and the senior managing director at Apex Holdings."
"Marcus Vance," Olivia finished the thought.
Gabriel closed the notebook with a sharp snap. "Marcus Vance isn't related to the electrician Arthur Vance. Marcus Vance is the man who manages the Duca family’s private wealth."
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He looked down at Olivia in the dim light of the attic.
"The man who hired the electrician to put the microphones in Guest Room 7... was my own chief financial manager," Gabriel said.
