Chapter 28 Ledger
LEDGER
The elevator doors haven’t fully opened when Alexi’s voice hits me.
“We have a problem.”
I step into the penthouse and see them. Savannah is sitting on the couch, pale and shaking. Alexi is pacing near the windows, his jaw tight with rage.
“What happened?” I’m moving toward her, cataloging injuries. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.” But her voice trembles. “The baby’s fine. I’m fine.”
“She’s not fine.” Alexi stops pacing. “Mason showed up at the shops. Grabbed her. I had to break his wrist to get him off her.”
Ice floods my veins. “Show me.”
Savannah extends her arm. The bruises are already forming. Five distinct marks where fingers dug into her skin hard enough to leave impressions.
I take her wrist carefully, examining the damage. The marks are deep. He wasn’t just holding her. He was hurting her.
“Where is he now?” My voice comes out flat.
“Security was taking him away with a broken wrist when we left.”
“Good.” I release Savannah’s arm and pull out my phone. “Silas. I need eyes on Mason Porter. Last seen in the Upper East Side with an injured wrist. Find him and report his location immediately.”
“On it, boss.”
I hang up and crouch in front of Savannah. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“He grabbed me when we tried to leave,” she says. “Wouldn’t let go. He was saying he loved me, that I’d always be his.” Her hand moves to her stomach. “He saw my bump and even that didn’t scare him off.”
“What did he say?”
“That I was his. That I’d always be his.” She looks up at me. “Ledger, the way he looked at me. It wasn’t love. It was possession. Like I was property he’d lost.”
I stand and walk to the windows. The city stretches below, oblivious. Somewhere out there, Mason Porter is walking around thinking he has any claim to my wife.
“Alexi, take Savannah to the bedroom. Make sure she rests. I need to make some calls.”
“Dad—”
“Now.”
Alexi helps Savannah up and guides her down the hall. I wait until I hear the bedroom door close before I dial Silas again.
“Talk to me.”
“Found him. Emergency room at Sunrise Hospital. Broken wrist, like you said. He’s getting it set now.”
“I want two men on him. Twenty-four-seven surveillance. Everywhere he goes, everything he does, everyone he talks to. I want to know when he pisses.”
“Understood. Anything else?”
“Get to my office. We need to talk.”
I hang up and stand at the windows for another minute, letting the rage settle into something colder. More useful.
Mason Porter put his hands on my pregnant wife. Left bruises on her skin. Scared her badly enough that she’s still shaking an hour later.
He’s a dead man. The only question is when.
Silas is waiting in my office when I arrive thirty minutes later. He’s got files spread across my desk, his expression grim.
“What am I looking at?” I ask.
“Mason Porter’s movements over the past three weeks. Since the first incident at Kryla Holdings.”
I flip through the files. Photos of Mason outside Savannah’s old apartment. Outside the Kryla building. Following her car through traffic. Standing across the street from the penthouse, staring up at the windows.
“He’s been stalking her.”
“More than that.” Silas pulls up something on his laptop. “He’s been tracking her credit card usage. That’s how he knew where she was today.”
“How is he accessing her credit card information?”
“That’s the question.” Silas leans back. “I ran Mason’s financials. He’s broke. Behind on rent. Maxed out his credit cards. He shouldn’t have the resources to track anything.”
I study the photos again. Mason outside the penthouse. How did he even know where we live? That information isn’t public.
“Someone’s helping him,” I say.
“That’s what I’m thinking. An ordinary guy with no money and no connections shouldn’t be able to access credit card records. Shouldn’t be able to find your home address, and most definitely shouldn’t be able to keep getting her new phone number every time we change it.”
The pieces click together. “The Kozlovs.”
Silas nods. “They’ve been quiet since the restaurant attempt failed months ago. But they’re not gone. And Mason is exactly the kind of desperate idiot they’d use. Someone with a grudge and nothing to lose.”
I sit down at my desk. “They’re using him to get to her.”
“That’s my guess. Give Mason resources, let him stalk her, wait for him to create an opening. Then they move in.”
“Today could have been that opening. If Alexi hadn’t been there—”
“But he was. And now Mason knows she’s pregnant.” Silas closes his laptop. “That changes things. Makes her an even bigger target.”
I pick up a pen from my desk, turning it over in my fingers. Mason Porter. A pawn in someone else’s game. But a dangerous pawn who’s already put his hands on my wife.
“We take him out,” I say. “Tonight. Make it look like an accident.”
“That might tip off whoever’s backing him. If the Kozlovs are using him as bait and he suddenly dies, they’ll know we’re onto them. They’ll change tactics.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should. Better to watch him. Let him lead us to whoever’s pulling his strings. Then we take them all out at once.”
The pen cracks in my hand. Just splits down the middle, ink leaking onto my palm. I look down at it, then at Silas. “He touched her. Left bruises on her skin. Scared her.”
“I know.”
“And you’re telling me to let him live.”
“I’m telling you to be smart. Use him to find the real threat. Then kill everyone involved.”
I drop the broken pen pieces onto my desk. The ink stains my skin, dark and viscous like blood. “How long?”
“Give it two weeks. See who he contacts, where he goes. If nothing develops, then we handle him permanently.”
Two weeks of Mason Porter breathing the same air as my wife.
I want to put a bullet in his head tonight, but Silas is right. If someone’s backing Mason, we need to know who and then eliminate the entire threat, not just the visible piece.
“Two weeks,” I say. “But if he comes near her again, I don’t care who’s backing him. He dies.”
“Understood.”
Silas starts gathering the files, but I stop him. “Wait. You said he keeps getting her new phone numbers. How?”
“We’re still working on that. But it has to be someone with access to our systems. Either hacking us or someone on the inside.”
“Find out which. And Silas?” I meet his eyes. “If it’s someone on the inside, bring them to me personally.”
“Will do.”
After he leaves, I sit at my desk and stare at the broken pen pieces. The ink has dried on my palm, sticky and dark.
I should go home. Check on Savannah. Make sure she’s eating, resting, and not spiraling into anxiety about what happened.
But first, I have another meeting.
Councilman Richard Torres arrives at one of my hotels at 8:00 PM sharp. He’s escorted to a private conference room by my men, looking nervous despite the expensive suit and practiced smile.
“Mr. Volkov.” He extends his hand. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
I don’t shake it. “Sit.”
He sits. Adjusts his tie and clears his throat. “I understand there’s been some delay with the permits for your Henderson property. I wanted to discuss—”
“You’ve been holding up my permits for three months. Demanding more money each time we submit new paperwork. Why?”
“Well, you see, the environmental review process is quite complex, and—”
“I don’t care about the environmental review.” I lean forward. “I care about why you think you can extort me. Why you think you can demand more money every time we meet. What makes you so confident?”
His smile falters. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Two weeks ago, you said the permits would be approved with a fifty-thousand-dollar donation to your reelection campaign. Last week, you raised it to seventy-five thousand. Today, your assistant said one hundred thousand. So I’ll ask again—what makes you so confident?”
He shifts in his seat. “The market rate for these kinds of permits has increased. It’s not personal, Mr. Volkov. It’s just business.”
“Is it?” I pick up the folder on the table. “Because I have records of permits you approved last month for the Rossi family. Same size property, same environmental concerns. They paid twenty-five thousand.”
His face pales. “I don’t know where you got that information, but—”
“I also have records of a meeting you had two weeks ago. Dinner at Carmine’s with a man named Dmitri Kozlov. You picked up the check.”
The color drains completely from his face now. “That was a coincidence. Just an old friend—”
“Dmitri Kozlov is not your friend. He’s the brother of a man I killed five years ago.
A man who tried to kill my son.” I stand and walk around the table slowly.
“So when you sit in my hotel and demand more money for permits, while having secret dinners with my enemies, it makes me wonder what you’re really doing. ”
“I swear, I didn’t know—”
“You said something interesting to your assistant yesterday. You said, ‘Volkov won’t have the upper hand much longer.’ What did you mean by that?”
He’s sweating now. “It was just talk. Didn’t mean anything.”
“Councilman Torres.” I stop behind his chair. “I’m going to give you one chance to tell me the truth. What did Dmitri Kozlov say to you at that dinner?”
“Nothing. We talked about sports, city politics—”
I pick up the pen from the conference table. It’s identical to the one I broke earlier. Heavy, expensive. Gold-plated.
“Let me be clear about something,” I say quietly. “I don’t make threats. I make promises. And I promise you that if you don’t tell me what Kozlov said, your wife will be a widow by morning. Your children will be fatherless. And your mistress in Summerlin will have to find a new source of income.”
The pen breaks in my hand. Not a crack this time. A full snap, pieces scattering across the table. Ink bleeds across the polished wood. Again.
Torres stares at the broken pen, then at my hand, then at my face.
“He asked about your routines,” he whispers. “Your wife’s routines. When she goes out, where she shops, what routes she takes.”
“And you told him.”
“He said it was for business. That he was trying to set up a meeting with you, wanted to know the best time to approach—”
“You told him where my wife goes. When she’s vulnerable.”
“I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know he meant any harm.”
I walk back around the table and sit down. Place both hands flat on the surface, ink still staining my palm.
“The permits will be approved by Monday. Original price of twenty-five thousand. If they’re not, I’ll make sure the information about your mistress and the campaign funds you’ve been embezzling reaches the right people. Do we understand each other?”
He nods frantically. “Yes. Yes, Monday. Twenty-five thousand. It’s done.”
“And if Dmitri Kozlov contacts you again, you tell him nothing. Better yet, you don’t take his calls at all.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Get out.”
He practically runs from the room.
I sit in the silence afterward, staring at the broken pen pieces and the ink bleeding across the table. Dmitri Kozlov has been gathering information about Savannah. Her routines, her locations, her vulnerabilities. And he’s been using people like Torres and Mason to do it.
Two weeks, I told Silas. Two weeks to watch Mason and find the connection.
But the connection is already here. Kozlov is orchestrating this. Using desperate men and corrupt politicians to get close to my wife.
I pull out my phone and call Silas. “Change of plans. I want surveillance on everyone who’s had contact with Dmitri Kozlov in the past six months. Politicians, businessmen, anyone. I want to know who he’s recruiting and what he’s planning.”
“That’s a lot of people, boss.”
“I don’t care. Do it.” I look at my ink-stained hand. “And double Savannah’s security. No one gets close to her without going through three of our men first.”
“What about Mason?”
“Keep watching him. But if he makes any move toward her, any move at all, you put him down. No warning. No second chances.”
“Understood.”
I hang up and head home. The penthouse is quiet when I arrive, lights dimmed. I find Savannah in bed, awake but not reading or watching anything. Just lying there, staring at the ceiling.
“Hey.” I sit on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I want this day to be over.”
“It is over. And Mason won’t get near you again.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Yes, I can.” I take her hand, careful of the bruises. “I’ve doubled your security. Changed your routines. Mason won’t know where you are or when you’re vulnerable.”
“He found me today.”
“I know. And we’re figuring out how. But it won’t happen again.”
She turns to look at me. “You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”
I don’t answer immediately. I can’t lie to her, but I can’t tell her everything either.
“If he comes near you again, yes.”
“Good.” Her voice is steady. “Because I’m tired of being scared. Tired of looking over my shoulder. I just want to feel safe.”
“You are safe. With me, you’re always safe.”
She moves my hand to her stomach. “We’re counting on that,” she says softly.
I lean down and kiss her forehead. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Either of you. I promise.”
My enemies are coming for my family. Using desperate men and insider information to get close.
Two weeks, I told Silas.
But I don’t think we have two weeks.
I think the war is already here.