Chapter 16 - Leo’s Final OfferLeo stood above them.
“Kora!”
Mateo pulled her behind a stone column.
Investigators surrounded the gallery.
Leo laughed.
“You brought the entire city.”
Kora shouted back.
“You always wanted an audience.”
Silence.
Then Leo said, “I’ll trade.”
“For what?”
“The final ledger.”
Kora looked at Mateo.
“We already have it.”
Leo smiled.
“No.”
His confidence made Mateo uneasy.
Leo continued.
“Victor kept two books.”
Mateo whispered, “He’s lying.”
But Kora remembered something.
The metal case had contained records from twenty-five years ago.
Nothing from the months immediately before Victor died.
“What’s in the second one?”
Leo answered.
“The names of people still in office.”
Federal judges.
Police commanders.
Corporate executives.
Men and women whose careers depended on those pages disappearing.
“Where is it?”
“Safe passage.”
Kora looked toward the investigators.
Leo laughed again.
“You think this is about me?”
He opened his jacket.
No bomb.
No dramatic device.
Just a folded photograph.
He dropped it.
The photograph fluttered down.
Kora picked it up.
Her mother standing outside Bell & Daughter Bakery.
On the back:
THE SECOND BOOK NEVER LEFT THE BAKERY.
Kora’s heart stopped.
Her father’s building.
For eighteen months they had searched elsewhere.
Thomas had lived above the evidence the entire time.
Leo said, “Let me leave and I tell you where.”
Kora looked up.
“No.”
His smile vanished.
“No?”
“My mother wanted the truth found.”
“So?”
“So she would never build a plan that depended on trusting you.”
Kora studied the photograph.
The bakery sign behind Elena.
Bell & Daughter.
One letter looked darker.
The ampersand.
Kora suddenly remembered childhood renovations.
Her mother insisting they keep the old wooden sign even when Thomas wanted a new one.
She understood.
“It’s in the sign.”
Leo’s face gave him away.
Mateo smiled.
Kora looked at the investigators.
“You don’t need his deal.”
Leo backed toward the railing.
Everything he had controlled was gone.
His family.
His plan.
His secret.
His reputation.
He stared at Kora.
“You were supposed to be nothing.”
Kora held his gaze.
“That was your mistake.”
Leo was arrested twelve minutes later.
No grand escape.
No final victory.
Handcuffs.
A burned chapel.
And the woman he had mocked watching silently as police led him away.
Outside, Mateo stood beside Kora.
“It’s over.”
She shook her head.
“Not yet.”
May you like
She looked toward Mercer Street.
“My mother left one more thing for us.”
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