Chapter 5
My father’s formula ledger looked worthless.
Leather cover.
Handwritten fragrance recipes.
Ratios.
Suppliers.
Notes about amber, iris, bergamot, oud.
But my father rarely wrote one thing when he could write two.
As a child, I watched him turn recipes into memory codes.
Supplier initials corresponded to meeting locations.
Batch numbers to years.
Ingredient percentages to shares of old route ownership.
Nothing that could be read without the key.
The key was family memory.
I had it.
Luca did not.
Unless somebody gave it to him.
I looked at Margaret.
She understood too.
“My father taught you the ledger?”
She nodded slowly.
“Some.”
Of course.
He trusted my mother with everything.
That was why attacking her had been especially stupid.
“What does Luca think is inside?”
Lucian answered.
“The Serra map.”
I went still.
That name had not been spoken in years.
The Serra map was never an actual map.
It was the arrangement dividing six old smuggling corridors between families after the Serra war.
My father renegotiated it privately.
No one possessed the complete version except him.
Or so I thought.
If Luca could reconstruct the old shares, he could convince several families they had been cheated.
Not by law.
By honor.
Dead men’s promises still start living wars.
Valeria stepped closer.
“Luca thinks the ledger proves your father stole two corridors from Valenti.”
“Did he?”
Margaret answered before I could.
“No.”
I looked at her.
She knew.
“He gave them up.”
“What?”
“Luca’s father gave them to yours.”
“Why?”
Her face darkened.
“To keep Luca alive.”
Now everyone listened.
Luca had been seventeen during the Serra war.
Reckless.
Captured by a rival crew.
His father traded future corridor rights for Caradonna help getting him back.
My father agreed.
No humiliation.
No public debt.
Just a private transfer recorded in code.
Luca grew up believing Caradonna stole what should have been his.
His father apparently never told him the truth.
Or died before he could.
The ledger could expose that.
So why steal it?
Margaret understood first.
“He doesn’t want to read it.”
I looked at her.
“He wants to destroy it.”
Exactly.
If the last proof disappeared, Luca could tell whatever version benefited him.
Valeria looked horrified.
“Then why did he need me inside the black room?”
“Because you weren’t helping him steal evidence.”
May you like
I stared at her.
“You were helping him erase the only thing that could contradict the war he intends to start.”
