Chapter 6 - The Ledger of Blood
The "unpleasant men" Ryan had threatened me with never showed up.
Instead,
it was my team.
They moved through the house with surgical precision,
mapping the rooms,
and seizing every electronic device.
Elias walked in,
carrying a portable scanner.
“We found the hidden compartment in the garden shed,”
he said,
nodding to me.
“Your mother was right.
There’s a ledger,
and it’s not just money.
It’s names.”
I looked at Ryan,
who was now slumped in the chair,
his bravado evaporated.
“Names of who?”
I asked.
“Contractors,
logistics officers,
and a few names from the State Department,”
Elias replied.
“This isn't just a smuggling ring,
Kelsey.
It’s an influence operation.
They weren't just moving hardware,
they were buying people.”
I walked over to the kitchen counter and picked up the apple pie.
I threw it into the trash.
“He used my mother as a distraction,”
I said.
“He knew she was onto him,
so he tried to frame her as senile to invalidate anything she said.
He wanted her in a psychiatric ward,
not a hospital.”
Ryan looked up,
his eyes filled with a desperate malice.
“She wouldn't stay out of it,”
he hissed.
“She found the photos of the warehouse in Baltimore.
She was going to tell you that night.
I had to stop her.”
“By hitting a seventy-one-year-old woman with a baseball bat?”
I asked,
my voice trembling with suppressed rage.
“She’s tougher than she looks,”
he sneered.
I slapped him.
The sound echoed through the kitchen,
silencing the team of investigators for a moment.
“Don't you ever speak of her again,”
I said.
Elias stepped forward,
showing me his tablet.
“Kelsey,
we found something else.
The 'multimillion-dollar secret' isn't just the money.
Look at this.”
He showed me a series of blueprints.
They were for a new military port in the Middle East.
A project I was currently overseeing.
Ryan had been selling the structural vulnerabilities of the port,
the weak points where a strike could be most effective.
He wasn't just a thief.
He was a merchant of death.
The four million dollars was just the down payment for the destruction of a billion-dollar facility,
and the lives of the soldiers stationed there.
I felt a wave of nausea.
Every kiss,
every "I love you,"
every anniversary dinner,
was a payment for information.
I was the source,
and he was the parasite.
“Take him away,”
I said,
turning my back on him.
“I want him in a black site.
No phone calls,
no visitors.”
“You can’t do this!”
Ryan screamed as they dragged him toward the door.
“I have rights!”
“In this house,
you have the right to remain silent,”
I said,
not looking back.
May you like
“But where you’re going,
silence is the only thing you’ll have.”
