Chapter 5 - the ledger in the vault
Adrien didn't blink. He stood up, walked over to a wall safe behind a vintage oil painting, and unlocked it. He pulled out a worn leather journal—his personal logs from 1999, when he was just a twenty-one-year-old soldier in his father's organization.
He opened the page and slammed it next to the legal notice on the table.
"Look at the cursive on the letter 'd', Lena," Adrien commanded quietly. "Look at the slant of the 'V'."
Lena leaned in. The difference was unmistakable. The legal order had a tight, mechanical slant; Adrien’s natural handwriting was broad, sharp, and left-leaning.
"In ninety-nine, I was in a military hospital in Germany after a job went wrong in Sicily," Adrien said, his voice hard. "I didn't even know Elena had fled until I came home to an empty room and a father who refused to speak her name. Someone forged my name on this document to make sure she never came back to me for help."
Lena covered her mouth, the foundation of her entire life crumbling beneath her. "Marcus... he spent three years telling me you were hunting me. Every time he hit me, every time he locked me in the apartment, he said he was hiding me from the Viscari family."
"He was keeping you in a cage so you would never ask questions," Marco interrupted from the doorway, holding a laptop. "Boss, we just tracked Marcus’s offshore bank accounts. Every month for the last ten years, he received fifty thousand dollars from a shell corporation called Swan Lake Holdings."
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Adrien’s eyes darkened with recognition. "Swan Lake was my father’s private trust. It was liquidated the day he died fifteen years ago. Whoever is paying Marcus has access to my father’s dead accounts."
Marco looked up grimly. "And Marcus just left a voicemail on the club’s public line. He says if we don't hand Lena over by dawn, he’s going to the press with Elena’s diary."
