I stepped closer to the desk, my boots crunching on a small piece of broken glass.

On the floor, half-hidden under the dead man’s chair, was a small leather-bound book.

I bent down and picked it up.

It was a personal ledger, its pages filled with handwritten dates and numbers.

As I opened it, a folded slip of paper fell out.

I picked it up and smoothed it out under the light of the desk lamp.

It was a bank transfer receipt from an offshore account in Biella.

The amount was for five hundred thousand dollars.

But it was the name on the destination account that caught my breath.

I looked at the paper, then up at the two men standing in the small office.

The light flickered, casting a long shadow across Killian’s face.

The ink on the paper was faded, but the printed name of the beneficiary was perfectly clear.

It was registered to a shell company called KV Holdings.

In the fine print at the bottom of the transaction log, the authorized signature was written in a sharp, slanted hand.

Killian Vale.