Chapter 7 - The Blood Ledger
The cellar went completely silent except for the low, rhythmic drip of condensation hitting the stone floor.
“Julian,” Damon warned, his voice vibrating with murder. “Shut your mouth.”
“Why? Let the girl hear it!” Julian sneered, keeping Preston as a human shield. “Thomas Bennett didn't die defending the Blackwell family from rivals. He was murdered by Damon’s father because he tried to take the Blackwell Ledger to the Department of Justice!”
Kate felt the floor drop out beneath her stomach. She stared at the back of Damon’s head.
“Damon…?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Is that true?”
Damon didn't turn around. His shoulders were rigid, corded with tension. “Julian is twisting history to save his pathetic neck.”
“Am I?” Julian scoffed. “Your father found out the Blackwells were trafficking weapons through commercial ports. He stole the master cipher—a encrypted flash drive that details every bribe, every judge, every assassination for thirty years. He hid it before Damon’s father put three bullets in his chest. And guess where he hid it, Kate?”
Kate’s mind raced through her childhood. The small apartment in South Boston. The cardboard boxes. Her mother’s worn jewelry box that had stayed locked in her mother’s hospital drawer.
“My mother’s locket,” Kate whispered, the realization hitting her like a freight train.
“Bingo,” Julian grinned savagely. “Your mother’s gold locket has the micro-key embedded in the back. Damon didn't hire you out of charity, Kate. He’s been tracking your mother’s hospital room for fourteen months, waiting for her to die so he could recover the ledger without making a scene! He paid her bills tonight not to save her—but to keep the doctors from turning her personal effects over to state probate!”
Kate took an involuntary step back, clutching her broken arm, her eyes wide with betrayal. “You… you used me? My mother… everything was a lie?”
Damon’s face twisted in an agony far worse than any physical wound. “Kate, listen to me. I didn't know about the locket until three days ago. I paid those bills because—”
Before he could finish, Preston Caldwell screamed: “Shoot him, Julian! Just kill him!”
In that split second of distraction, chaos erupted.
Walken fired from the doorway, hitting Julian’s mercenary on the left. Damon drew his sidearm with blinding speed, dropping the second gunman before the man could raise his rifle.
Julian pulled the trigger.
The gunshot deafened the enclosed cellar. Preston slumped forward, lifeless, as Julian dove behind a rack of heavy oak casks, firing blindly toward Damon.
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“Down!” Matteo tackled Kate to the stone floor as ricochets sparked off the granite walls.
***
