Chapter 111 Ghost Accounts
Nate's POV
The scotch in my glass was twenty years old, and it tasted like kerosene. I stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows of my study, the lights of Manhattan glittering like a carpet of cold diamonds, mocking the absolute chaos of my internal state. Four days. It had been four days since I’d stood on those concrete steps in the middle of a late-January freeze and spilled my soul onto the pavement. Four days since I’d watched Mila Stone look at me with absolute terror—a look that hurt worse than any blow my father had ever landed—and bolt into her building as if I were a monster out of a nightmare.
"You’re going to burn a hole through that glass if you keep staring at it," Gavin said from the leather armchair behind me. He sounded tired, but his usual flippant edge was sharp enough to draw blood.
I didn't turn around. My jaw was clamped so tight it felt like the bone might crack. "She ran, Gavin. I told her I loved her—words I haven't said to another living soul in my adult life—and she looked at me like I’d pulled a gun on her."
"To be fair, Nate," Theodore’s calm, measured voice joined in from the corner of the room, "to a girl like Mila, those words are a gun. They’re a threat to the only thing she thinks she has left: her autonomy. You offered her your heart, but she heard the snap of a collar."
I finally turned, my fingers white around the crystal tumbler. "I’m not trying to own her. I’m trying to keep her from collapsing! She’s working double shifts at some grease-trap diner near the hospital while her eyes get hollower by the hour. I have men watching her from the shadows, and every report is the same: she’s a ghost. She’s pale, she’s not eating, and she’s avoiding my calls like they’re a death sentence."
The hurt was there, a dull, throbbing ache behind my ribs, but it was being rapidly overtaken by a cold, protective rage. It was the kind of rage that only a Salvatore could truly harness—a calculated, lethal focus that didn't just want to solve the problem, but wanted to erase it from the face of the earth.
"We have work to do," I snapped, setting the glass down on the mahogany desk with a sharp, final clack. "I didn't bring the two of you here to analyze my failures. I brought you here to help me dismantle the people who put those bags under her eyes."
Gavin sat up, his expression shifting from amusement to professional intensity. He was a Hollis; his family lived and breathed the law, but Gavin knew exactly where the law ended and the real world began. Theodore, representing the Beaumont interests and the tactical side of my operations, leaned over the desk.
"My investigator sent me this weeks ago, and I've been sitting on it, trying to figure out how to tell her without breaking her," I said, sliding my phone across the desk.
The text was short, clinical, and sent a fresh jolt of ice through my veins every time I read it: Found them. They’re in a motel outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania. They fled. Your hunch about the docks was wrong, but the debt was real. They owe a local shark named "Vane" six figures. They took what they had and vanished. Problem is, Vane doesn't care who pays. He knows about the girls.
"Vane," Gavin muttered, his brow furrowing as he pulled his laptop closer and began a rapid-fire sequence of searches. "I’ve heard that name in the backrooms of my father’s firm. He’s a bottom-feeder who specializes in 'collateral.' He doesn't go after the debtors; he goes after their vulnerabilities."
The rage in my chest flared into a white-hot heat. Mila’s parents hadn't just stolen the money I’d given them for the girls; they had left their daughters as collateral for a six-figure gambling debt. They had fled to a cockroach-infested motel in Pennsylvania and left Mila to face a shark like Vane alone.
"Theodore," I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous, quiet rasp. "I want every resource the Beaumonts have on digital surveillance moved to Pennsylvania. I want to know who they’re talking to. If they so much as sneeze, I want a report."
"Consider it done," Theodore replied, already tapping into an encrypted terminal.
"And Gavin," I said, looking at the man whose family held the keys to both the courts and the gutters. "I want the paper trail. How does a pair like that—addicts with a rap sheet—find their way into a six-figure hole with a shark like Vane? People with their history don't get that kind of credit without someone vouching for them."
Gavin didn't answer for a long time. The only sound in the room was the clicking of keys and the hum of high-end cooling fans. He used his connections to pull data that didn't exist in the public eye—ledger entries from "off-the-books" lenders and encrypted communications from high-stakes rings.
Suddenly, Gavin stopped. He scrolled back up, his eyes widening as he cross-referenced a series of bank transfers.
"Nate," Gavin said, his voice losing all of its previous levity. "This wasn't just a string of bad luck at a local casino. Your 'rounding errors' are career criminals—they know how the game works. But someone opened a door for them that should have been locked tight. They were granted entry into a high-stakes, off-the-books ring that usually requires a pedigree they simply don't have."
I leaned in, my heart hammering against my ribs. "What are you saying?"
Gavin looked up, his face grim. "I’m saying they were enabled. Someone paved the way for them to indulge every greedy impulse they had, providing the kind of credit that only ends in a total wipeout. I’ve found the paper trail... and it doesn't just stop at a gambling debt. Vane is the one holding the leash, but the ledger shows a series of ghost accounts funneling money into the game specifically to keep Mila's father at the table."
I stared at the screen, the digital numbers blurred by the intensity of my focus. "Who’s behind the ghost accounts, Gavin?"
Gavin’s fingers hovered over the keys, his face set in a mask of grim determination as he bypassed the final layer of encryption. "It's buried deep, Nate. Hidden behind three shell companies and a law firm in the Caymans. I can't see the face yet... but I can see the shadow they're casting. And it's huge."