Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
She'd be collateral damage. The same kind of collateral damage that the Maddox crew claims to exist to prevent.
I think about Millhaven. About Render rerouting around a town of two thousand people because civilian lives aren't a calculation. About Dean's file of every collateral incident. About Arrow almost quitting after a bystander took a round.
Then I think about Poe. In a cell. Chains on his wrists. Blood on his face. Protecting my secret because that's what big brothers do even when their little sisters don't deserve it.
Thirty-two hours until the breach. The credentials cycle in three hours. If I'm going to complete the map, I have to decide now.
I decide.
I go after Margaux’s account with a different kind of care than the rest of the system. The company servers give way to the tools Render taught me. A personal bank account is something else entirely. Smaller bank. Different rules. Different weight on every choice I make.
The bank’s security is solid but not impossible. I find a quiet way in after about twelve minutes, using a method Render showed me back at the cabin. I slip through while an administrator is already logged in, staying small and careful so nothing raises an alarm.
I’m inside by 2:47.
Margaux’s account opens on the screen like a window into a life that has nothing to do with mine. Tuition payments to an expensive university. Money for housing, food, books. A small savings account she seems to manage herself. She’s careful with money. She doesn’t overspend. She saves steadily. She makes deliberate choices. This is someone who takes her independence seriously, which makes what I’m about to do feel like swallowing glass.
I follow the extra money. The small differences between what should be there for school and what actually moves through the account. Forty-three dollars here. A hundred and twelve there. Never enough for anyone to notice if they aren’t looking hard.
But it adds up. Over eighteen months, nearly forty thousand dollars has been quietly redirected. All of it goes to an account in Luxembourg under a name called Nightwood Capital.
I check every place I can. Nothing public turns up. No real company. No officers. No address. Just a ghost name that exists only on paper in a place that protects privacy.
The account number matches patterns I’ve already seen in Goldenbell’s main system. Nightwood Capital isn’t separate. It’s another layer of the same operation. The money from Margaux’s trust joins other funds and moves somewhere else. One more step to follow.
The clock reads 3:15. Forty-five minutes until my access resets.
I need to reach the Luxembourg account. The bank there is bigger and tighter. Time is running out.
I work quickly. The connection between Nightwood Capital and Goldenbell means there’s got to be a regular transfer moving money between them. If I can catch the next one, I can ride along the same way I slipped into the first bank.
The next transfer is set for 3:22. Seven minutes.
I set up the intercept in six.
At 3:22 the transfer starts. Twelve thousand dollars moving from a Goldenbell account to Nightwood Capital. I attach my request to it, keeping it small and ordinary-looking. The Luxembourg bank accepts the transfer and my request slips through with it.
I’m in.
Nightwood Capital is the end of the line. Every outgoing transfer from this account goes to one place: a personal investment account belonging to Serafina Delacroix herself. Not a company. Not a subsidiary. Her. All the money that flows through Goldenbell, through the trusts and the shells and a nineteen-year-old’s college fund, ends up here in her private portfolio.
And the portfolio is huge. Four-hundred and seventy-two million dollars. Real estate in three countries. Art. Precious metals. A personal fortune built on everything Goldenbell has taken from people over the years.
I map it all. Every account. Every investment. Every path the money takes. The complete picture of Serafina’s empire, from the public face to the private fortune.
At 3:38 I finish. One hundred percent complete. Every connection recorded.
At 3:42 I refresh my access with eighteen minutes to spare.
I sit back. My hands are shaking. Not the old panic tremor. Pure adrenaline from running at full speed for hours with no one to catch a mistake.
The map glows on the screen. Thirty-seven pages of everything we need. Enough to take Goldenbell apart from the ground up. Enough to freeze every asset Serafina owns. Enough to put her away for a long time.
There's one thing left to do before I package it.
Render taught me this on the second day at the cabin, sitting so close our elbows kept touching. Before you hand anything to anyone, you read it as your enemy. You look for what it gives away. Not what it proves. What it costs.
So I run the integrity pass. I pull Goldenbell's archived security logs into the package and start reading them the way a federal forensic accountant would read them, from the outside, with no loyalty to anyone in the file.