“Something wrong?” I asked.

“Too quiet,” Declan muttered.

He pulled a black pistol from his shoulder holster and checked the chamber.

“You just keep reading, Callahan. Don’t worry about the outside.”

I turned back to the papers, my heart beating faster.

If the Vescari family was sending millions to Aegis, and the text message said they were lying, then Roman’s neat columns were a fabrication.

I flipped to the back of the Vescari book.

A page had been cleanly sliced out with a razor.

The missing page corresponded to the exact week the four million dollars had vanished.

I leaned closer to the desk, comparing the torn edge of the ledger page with the digital image on my phone screen.

The jagged white line of the remnant in the book matched the rough border of the burnt paper in the photo.

The proof was right in front of me.

One of the three bosses had destroyed this book, and someone else had saved the scrap to warn me.

Or to use me.

“Declan,” I said, keeping my voice low.

“What?” he barked, not turning around.