Chapter 4 - The Dead Man’s AccountThe first bullet struck the concrete wall six inches above Vincent Romano’s head.
The second destroyed the overhead light.
Darkness swallowed Unit 117.
Lydia heard Vincent move before she saw him.
One arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her beneath the steel table while his other hand reached beneath his coat.
The man who had kissed her gently at Isabella’s mausoleum vanished.
The king of Chicago returned.
“Bruno!”
“Three shooters!” Bruno shouted from the corridor.
A burst of gunfire answered him.
Lydia pressed herself against the freezing floor.
The black case sat barely three feet away.
Vincent noticed where she was looking.
“Forget the case.”
“My father died protecting it.”
“You don’t die protecting it too.”
Another bullet tore through the thin metal wall.
Vincent fired twice toward the muzzle flash.
A scream followed.
Then Bruno’s voice thundered.
“Move!”
Vincent grabbed Lydia.
They sprinted from the unit into the corridor.
One attacker lay motionless near the stairwell.
Another disappeared through a service door.
Bruno chased him.
The third appeared suddenly at the far end of the hall.
His weapon rose.
Lydia saw it before Vincent did.
“Down!”
She slammed both hands into Vincent’s chest.
They fell together.
The bullet shattered a fire extinguisher behind them.
White chemical powder exploded into the corridor.
Vincent rolled, fired once, and the attacker dropped his weapon.
Silence followed.
Not true silence.
Sirens screamed somewhere far away.
A sprinkler hissed.
Bruno cursed while dragging the surviving attacker back from the service exit.
But to Lydia, the world had narrowed to Vincent’s face above hers.
His hand touched her cheek.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“You pushed me.”
“He was aiming at you.”
“You pushed me.”
She stared at him.
“You’re welcome.”
For one stunned second, Vincent looked furious.
Then he pulled her against him.
His embrace was crushing.
“Never do that again.”
“I make no promises.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
“Then you should have phrased it better.”
Despite everything, Bruno made a noise suspiciously close to a laugh.
Vincent glared at him.
Bruno immediately returned to looking homicidal.
The surviving shooter wore no identification.
No phone.
No wallet.
Only a silver cuff link engraved with a small letter V.
They took him to a secure Romano property rather than the police.
Lydia did not ask what would happen there.
She was beginning to understand that there were certain questions one did not ask if one wished to sleep.
The black case went with them.
Back at the estate, Vincent placed it in the center of the study.
“Could be explosive.”
Lydia shook her head.
“My father kept it for years.”
“That doesn’t mean Vale didn’t tamper with it.”
Bruno ran detection equipment over the exterior.
Nothing.
No explosives.
No transmitter.
No hidden radio frequency.
Vincent finally allowed Lydia to approach.
The case required a six-digit code.
Lydia stared at the keypad.
“Dad hated birthdays as passwords.”
Vincent waited.
“He used mathematical patterns.”
She tried the first six digits of pi.
Wrong.
Fibonacci sequence.
Wrong.
Her mother’s date of death.
Wrong.
Vincent touched her wrist before she could try again.
“Stop.”
“Why?”
“Three failures.”
Lydia looked closer.
A tiny red indicator blinked beside the keypad.
“You think it wipes?”
“I think your father was an accountant hiding something from Adrian Vale. Assume paranoia.”
She exhaled.
Then a memory surfaced.
James Harrison lying in a hospital bed, teaching twelve-year-old Lydia how to balance a checkbook.
Numbers don’t lie, sweetheart. People do. Always look for what doesn’t belong.
“What doesn’t belong,” Lydia whispered.
Vincent watched her.
She looked at the photograph from the gala again.
Four people.
Reed.
Silas.
Isabella.
James.
Then she remembered the date.
The photograph had been taken fifteen years earlier.
She asked Marco to enhance the building sign in the background.
Ten minutes later they had it.
HARRISON & CO. FORENSIC AUDITING.
Lydia stared.
“My father owned a firm.”
She had never known.
Records showed the business had closed thirteen years earlier.
The company incorporation date supplied six digits.
Lydia entered them.
The lock clicked.
Inside the black case were three things.
A stack of handwritten ledgers.
A hard drive.
And a digital voice recorder sealed in plastic.
Lydia pressed play.
Static crackled.
Then her father’s voice filled the room.
“If this recording is being heard, then the Vale network has probably survived longer than I expected.”
Lydia covered her mouth.
Vincent stood behind her without touching her.
He understood that this moment belonged to the dead.
James continued.
“I was hired in 2011 to audit shipping losses for Salvatore Romano.”
Vincent’s father.
“At first I believed the theft was internal. It wasn’t. The theft was deliberate market engineering. Someone was funding rival criminal organizations simultaneously, manipulating them into wars, and buying their legitimate assets after the violence destroyed their value.”
Vincent’s expression darkened.
“Vale,” Bruno muttered.
James’s recording continued.
“Adrian Vale created a private financial consortium involving judges, police commanders, hospital administrators, union leaders, construction executives, and organized crime brokers. He did not care which family won. He profited from instability.”
Lydia sat slowly.
“I discovered approximately $1.8 billion moved through Vale-controlled accounts over seven years. When I tried to report it, my office was burglarized. My partner disappeared.”
The recording paused.
James coughed.
Even through an old speaker, Lydia recognized the sound.
Cancer.
“My diagnosis came shortly afterward.”
Vincent leaned forward.
“I now believe my illness may have been natural. But Vale’s people exploited it. They purchased my medical debt, compromised my insurance claims, and made certain my daughter would inherit financial ruin if I spoke publicly.”
Lydia closed her eyes.
There it was.
The truth she had feared.
Her father had not accidentally left her buried.
Someone had buried her deliberately.
James continued.
“I met Isabella Romano while auditing several gallery acquisitions linked to shipping assets. She understood immediately what I had found. She was brave. Braver than anyone around her knew.”
Vincent looked away.
“For years, we collected evidence. Isabella convinced me Vincent was not part of Vale’s system. I disagreed. I thought every Romano was compromised by violence eventually.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
“Then my daughter met Isabella by chance.”
Lydia’s eyes snapped open.
“What?”
The recording continued.
“That was not supposed to happen. Isabella told me she had stopped at Lydia’s bakery one morning after following one of Vale’s couriers. She recognized Lydia from the photograph on my desk. She bought coffee. She said nothing.”
Lydia remembered.
A beautiful woman with dark hair.
A generous tip.
A sapphire necklace.
She had served Isabella months before the night at the diner without knowing her name.
James’s voice softened.
“When Isabella later told me she might need a civilian safe point, I gave her the address of the diner where Lydia worked nights. I believed Vale’s people would never connect my daughter to a temporary waitress position.”
Lydia began crying silently.
Her father had led Isabella to her.
Not to endanger her.
To save her.
Vincent crouched beside Lydia.
The recording continued.
“If Isabella is dead and Lydia has found Vincent, then there is one final truth they need.”
Static interrupted.
Then James spoke clearly.
“Adrian Vale has a son.”
Bruno frowned.
“No record of one.”
“Not publicly,” the recording said as though answering him.
“His son’s name is Julian Mercer. Vale placed him inside the federal financial system under his mother’s surname. He has spent years climbing through Treasury enforcement and organized-crime intelligence.”
Vincent went completely still.
Lydia looked at him.
“You know that name.”
Vincent’s eyes were lethal.
“Special Agent Julian Mercer.”
The same federal agent who had personally contacted Vincent after Reed’s arrest.
The same agent who had congratulated him—carefully, indirectly—for helping clean corruption from the city.
The same man currently supervising the federal task force investigating Chicago organized crime.
James’s recording ended with one sentence.
“If Julian Mercer knows Lydia survived, Vale will not merely come for the evidence.”
A pause.
“He will turn Vincent Romano into the weapon that destroys her.”
The recorder clicked off.
No one spoke.
Then Vincent’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
“Romano.”
A smooth male voice replied.
“Vincent.”
Julian Mercer.
Vincent activated the speaker.
“I heard there was an unfortunate incident at a storage facility.”
Bruno’s face hardened.
Vincent remained calm.
“News travels quickly.”
“It does when people shoot each other in broad daylight.”
“What do you want?”
“To help.”
Lydia almost laughed.
Mercer continued.
“Adrian Vale is a dangerous man. You recently stumbled into something much larger than Silas and Reed. Bring me whatever you recovered from that storage facility, and I can place Lydia Harrison in federal protection.”
Vincent looked directly at Lydia.
“No.”
Mercer sighed.
“I expected that.”
“Then why call?”
“To offer you a choice before people start dying.”
The line went quiet.
Vincent’s eyes changed.
“What did you do?”
Mercer spoke almost regretfully.
“Check on Bruno’s family.”
Bruno’s face drained.
He reached for his phone.
No answer.
His younger sister, Sofia, lived with her husband and two children thirty miles outside Chicago.
Bruno called again.
Nothing.
A third time.
Voicemail.
Then a photograph arrived on Vincent’s phone.
Sofia sat tied to a chair.
Her husband beside her.
The children were not visible.
Bruno made a sound Lydia had never heard from him.
Not anger.
Fear.
Mercer returned to the line.
“Bring the black case to Union Station tomorrow at midnight. No police. No soldiers. No games.”
“You’re dead,” Bruno whispered.
Mercer ignored him.
“If you fail to arrive, one member of Bruno’s family disappears every hour.”
Vincent’s voice was colder than winter.
“And if I arrive?”
“Then we discuss terms.”
Mercer disconnected.
Bruno grabbed the desk so hard the wood cracked beneath his fingers.
Vincent stepped toward him.
“We get them back.”
“If they touch my sister—”
“We get them back.”
Bruno looked at Lydia.
For the first time since she had known him, his eyes were wet.
“I should never have brought that case out.”
Lydia stood.
“No.”
Both men looked at her.
She wiped her tears.
“My father spent years hiding from Adrian Vale.”
She looked at the ledgers.
“Isabella died trying to expose him.”
Then she looked at Vincent.
“I am done hiding.”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
“Lydia.”
“Mercer wants the black case because he thinks it contains the only evidence.”
“It may.”
“No.”
She pointed to the hard drive.
“My father was an accountant.”
“So?”
“So accountants make backups.”
Vincent stared at her.
For the first time that night, Lydia smiled.
“My father once made three copies of my middle-school tax-project spreadsheet because he said one copy was a wish, two copies were optimism, and three copies were accounting.”
Bruno slowly straightened.
Lydia looked at the old ledgers again.
“If he trusted no one, then the real weapon isn’t in this case.”
“Where is it?” Vincent asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
May you like
She picked up her father’s recorder.
“But Julian Mercer just gave us less than twenty-four hours to find it.”
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