“But your transit manifest only charged him for transport on one hundred crates.”

Roman’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the ink figures.

He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small black notebook of his own.

He flipped through the pages, his thumb stopping on a column of tight, neat handwriting.

“My office billed him for three hundred,” Roman said, his voice flat and cold.

“But according to this ledger, the extra two hundred crates vanished from the taxable records.”

I looked at the margins of my father’s ledger again, squinting under the bright bulb of the lamp.

There were tiny, faint pencil marks next to each entry, disguised as simple tally marks.

“They aren’t tallies,” I said, rubbing my thumb over the graphite.

“They are percentage markers.”

I grabbed a blunt pencil from the desk organizer and began to calculate the differences on a scrap of paper.

Roman watched my hand move, his analytical mind already calculating the variables before I could finish.

“The missing freight charges,” Roman muttered. “They weren’t lost in transit.”

“They were redirected,” I said.