The Alliance of the Broken Ledger and the Blackwell Empire
My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
“It is my leverage,” I said.
“It is our survival,” Arthur corrected, his voice rising. “Without those accounts, the Blackwells will discard you the moment they find a way to clear their names.”
I looked down at the paper.
The ink was dark, written in the precise, cramped hand of a man who spent his life hiding other people’s money.
I looked at the Swiss routing code.
*CH93-0485-2201-9941.*
I repeated it again in my mind.
Then the Cayman transit number.
*KY11-9023-4481-0052.*
The numbers sat in my head like columns on a balance sheet.
I had spent years analyzing numbers for my father’s clients.
I knew how to hold a sequence in my memory under pressure.
“The book is nothing without the keys, Dad,” I said.
Arthur frowned, his eyes narrowing as he tried to read my face.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I pulled my hand out of my pocket.
The brass lighter caught the glare of the ceiling lights.
Elias took half a step forward, his hand dropping toward his utility belt.
“Don’t,” I told Elias.