Chapter 2 - THE SECOND LEDGER
The tablet in Gabriel Falcone’s man’s hand showed Chad Wilkins entering the accounting office at 2:13 in the morning.
Khloe stared at the screen.
Chad stopped breathing.
The footage was dated three nights earlier.
The same night Khloe had stayed until almost midnight tracing the missing vendor reimbursements.
On the screen, Chad unlocked the basement office, walked directly to Khloe’s desk, and sat in her chair.
He stayed there for eleven minutes.
Then he left carrying a black leather folder.
Khloe tightened her hold on the ledger against her chest.
“That’s my office.”
Gabriel glanced at her.
“I know.”
Chad found his voice.
“I can explain.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“Then this is the part where you do.”
Three hundred people were still watching.
Gabriel seemed to remember that at the same moment Khloe did.
He turned toward the room.
“Music back on.”
Nobody moved.
Gabriel’s expression didn’t change.
The pianist understood first.
Soft jazz returned.
People gradually faced their tables again, although half the room was clearly pretending not to listen.
Gabriel pointed toward a private corridor behind the bar.
“You. Ms. Harrison. With me.”
Chad didn’t argue.
That frightened Khloe almost as much as his grip on her wrist had.
Ten minutes earlier he had seemed untouchable.
Now he looked like a man who had discovered the floor beneath him wasn’t solid.
The private office behind the lounge belonged to Gabriel.
Khloe knew that immediately.
No photographs.
No decorative clutter.
One desk.
Four leather chairs.
A locked cabinet.
Everything looked chosen because it had a purpose.
Gabriel’s man placed the tablet on the desk.
“My name is Marco,” he told Khloe quietly.
His tone surprised her.
Not friendly exactly.
Respectful.
Gabriel remained standing.
“Show her.”
Marco opened a spreadsheet.
Khloe leaned closer.
The transfers she had found were there.
$5,000.
$20,000.
$80,000.
Then twelve more.
Total: $217,400.
Her eyes moved down the authorization column.
CHAD WILKINS.
“You already knew,” she said.
Gabriel watched her.
“I knew money was moving.”
“Why didn’t you stop it?”
“Because stopping the transfers would have told whoever was moving them that I was watching.”
Chad gave a bitter laugh.
“So this was all a trap.”
“No.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“You were.”
Chad sat heavily.
Khloe opened her ledger.
“The reimbursements all use vendors that have legitimate contracts with the club.”
Marco nodded.
“That’s why automated review missed them.”
“But the amounts don’t match invoices.”
“No.”
Khloe pointed.
“This one says twenty thousand for imported champagne.”
“Yes.”
“We purchased six thousand three hundred twelve dollars that week.”
Gabriel’s gaze sharpened.
“You remember that?”
Khloe looked at him.
“I remember numbers.”
For the first time, something almost like approval crossed his face.
She hated that she noticed.
Gabriel turned to Chad.
“Where did the difference go?”
Chad stared at the floor.
“I moved it.”
Khloe felt something inside her drop.
So she had been right.
Chad had stolen the money.
Except Gabriel didn’t look satisfied.
“Where?”
“Different accounts.”
“For you?”
Chad hesitated.
“No.”
Gabriel pulled out the chair across from him.
“Careful.”
“I didn’t keep it.”
“Then why did you put your authorization on two hundred seventeen thousand dollars in false reimbursements?”
Chad rubbed his face.
“Because somebody already had enough to put me in prison.”
Khloe frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Chad looked at her.
The arrogance was gone.
“I took money before.”
Her stomach tightened.
“How much?”
“Thirty-two thousand.”
Gabriel’s expression remained cold.
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“Why?”
Chad swallowed.
“My mother needed long-term care. Insurance stopped covering the facility.”
Khloe said nothing.
It didn’t excuse what he had done.
But suddenly Chad Wilkins wasn’t only the man who had hurt her wrist and humiliated her in front of a room.
He was also a son who had made one terrible decision and then discovered somebody could own him with it.
Gabriel leaned back.
“And somebody found out.”
Chad nodded.
“They sent me copies of the old transfers.”
“What old transfers?”
Chad looked at Khloe.
“That’s what your ledger doesn’t show.”
He stood slowly.
Marco shifted position.
Chad noticed.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He walked to the small safe behind the bar cabinet.
Gabriel stopped him.
“What’s in there?”
“The reason I knew Harrison was going to find everything eventually.”
He entered the combination.
Inside sat another ledger.
Older.
Red leather.
Cracked spine.
Chad put it on the desk.
Khloe’s pulse changed.
The first page was dated eighteen years earlier.
Long before she worked at the Obsidian.
Long before Chad became general manager.
The reimbursement columns looked almost identical.
Liquor settlement.
Kitchen equipment.
Entertainment fee.
Private transport.
Amounts split across multiple vendors.
Khloe turned pages faster.
Five thousand.
Twenty thousand.
Eighty thousand.
The same sequence.
Somebody wasn’t simply stealing money.
They were copying an old pattern.
“Who gave you this?” Gabriel asked.
Chad’s jaw tightened.
“I found it in the club archive six months ago.”
“And then?”
“Two weeks later, somebody left copies of my mother’s care invoices on my desk.”
“No note?”
“No.”
“No demand?”
“Not at first.”
Khloe looked up.
“What happened next?”
“A reimbursement appeared in my approval queue.”
“False?”
“Yes.”
“And you approved it.”
Chad nodded.
“Then another came.”
“You never asked who was sending them?”
“I knew enough not to.”
Gabriel’s voice went flat.
“That is cowardice pretending to be intelligence.”
Chad looked at him.
“I had already stolen thirty-two thousand dollars. Whoever this was knew it. I thought if I refused, my mother would lose her care and I’d go to prison.”
“And instead you decided Khloe would take the fall.”
Chad’s face tightened.
That was the part he couldn’t soften.
“Yes.”
Khloe felt her wrist begin throbbing again.
“You told everyone I’d been stealing for months.”
“I needed them to believe you were manipulating the books before you showed anyone what you found.”
“You grabbed me.”
“I panicked.”
“That isn’t an apology.”
“No.”
For once, Chad didn’t defend himself.
“It isn’t.”
Gabriel reached for the red ledger.
Khloe saw a notation in the margin.
Tiny.
Written in blue ink.
Three letters appeared beside almost every suspicious transfer.
T.H.
She stopped.
“Wait.”
Gabriel looked at her.
Khloe pulled the ledger closer.
There it was again.
T.H.
Page after page.
Always beside the questionable entries.
Her mouth went dry.
Gabriel noticed.
“What?”
Khloe didn’t answer.
She turned to the final page.
At the bottom, written in handwriting she knew as well as her own, were six words.
CHECK ROUNDING BEFORE YOU TRUST TOTALS.
Her father used to say that.
Every Saturday morning while teaching her bookkeeping at their kitchen table.
Check rounding before you trust totals.
Khloe sat down.
“No.”
Gabriel’s eyes moved from the handwriting to her face.
“You recognize it.”
“My father.”
Chad looked confused.
“What?”
Khloe touched the initials.
“T.H.”
She could barely say the name.
“Thomas Harrison.”
Marco looked at Gabriel.
Something silent passed between them.
Khloe caught it.
Her head snapped up.
“You knew.”
Gabriel did not deny it.
Her chest tightened.
“You knew my father.”
Gabriel looked at the old ledger.
“Yes.”
Khloe stood.
“My father died four years ago. He never told me he worked here.”
“He didn’t.”
“Then why is his handwriting in an Obsidian ledger?”
Gabriel took a slow breath.
“Because eighteen years ago, the Obsidian wasn’t the only business losing money.”
Khloe stared at him.
“What are you talking about?”
Gabriel reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.
He placed a silver pocket watch on the desk.
Khloe stopped breathing.
The crystal had a thin crack across the eleven.
The chain had been repaired with dark wire.
She had seen that watch every day of her childhood.
Her father had worn it until the year he lost his accounting practice.
Then one morning it disappeared.
Khloe had always believed he sold it.
Her voice came out almost soundless.
“Where did you get that?”
Gabriel looked at her.
“Your father gave it to me.”
Khloe stared at him.
“When?”
“Eighteen years ago.”
Her eyes filled with confusion.
She reached for the watch.
Gabriel didn’t stop her.
The lid opened beneath her thumb.
Inside was the tiny photograph she remembered.
Her father holding six-year-old Khloe on his shoulders beside Lake Michigan.
But something else had been placed beneath it.
A narrow strip of paper.
Khloe removed it.
One sentence was written in her father’s handwriting.
IF THEY EVER USE MY NAME, FIND THE WOMAN IN THE WHITE COAT.
Khloe looked up.
Gabriel’s face had gone completely still.
Chad whispered, “Jesus.”
Khloe turned the paper over.
There was one more line.
A name.
EVELYN FALCONE.
She looked at Gabriel.
“Who is Evelyn Falcone?”
For the first time that night, Chicago’s most feared man looked uncertain.
May you like
“My mother.”
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