Chapter 33 Receipts Dont Lie
The bookshelf groaned. Claus slammed his hand down on the wood right next to my head. The sound was like a gunshot in the tiny, cramped aisle. I was pinned. No way out.
"Cut the crap, Ilse," he growled.
He didn't waste time on threats. He reached into his coat and slapped a stack of papers against the shelf right in front of my face. I didn't need to look at them to know they were bad news.
"The Varannes signature is on this invoice," he said, his voice flat.
"It's for a massive shipment of timber to the Western Barracks. The problem? That wood never made it to the barracks. It was diverted to a warehouse in the black market district a month ago. And look at this."
He pointed a gloved finger at a shaky, messy ink signature at the bottom.
"That's not your father's handwriting. It's a copy. A sloppy one."
My head started spinning. I tried to do the negotiation thing.
Keep the cool mask on. "Duke, I think there's a misunderstanding. You know how supply chains in the border regions are. Sometimes paperwork gets lost, or signatures get forged by lower level clerks trying to make a quick buck. My family is just optimizing our resource allocation...."
"Stop," he cut me off. He didn't even blink.
"Don't talk to me like I'm a customer you're trying to con. I don't care about your corporate buzzwords. I care about the fact that military steel, stolen steel, was found in the same batch as that timber."
I opened my mouth to pivot again, to suggest we look into "internal audits," but he just shut me down.
"You're trying to divert the blame to a clerk, but the tracking numbers match your private ledger, not the public one. I didn't come here to debate logistics, Ilse. I came here to tell you I know you're the one running the ghost shipments."
My gut dropped. I was outplayed. I was playing 4D chess with a guy who just flips the board and stabs you. I glanced past his shoulder, toward the dirty bookstore window.
Empty.
The street outside was a muddy mess, but there was no sign of Julian Vance's white horse.
And the family carriage of Gisella? nothing.
Gisella hadn't moved. She wasn't coming in.
She wasn't doing her part. The whole trap was a bust.
Julian didn't show, Gisella too, and I was stuck here in a dusty aisle with the most dangerous guy in the empire.
I felt like an idiot. I'd spent all morning prepping this, checking the angles, making sure everything was perfect, and it all fell apart because my 'allies' were too busy or too bored to play their parts.
"You're distracted," Claus said. He leaned in closer, his eyes narrowing. "Looking for someone? Maybe a certain Viscount who's supposed to be here for his weekly history fix?"
I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. He knew. He knew everything.
"Nobody is coming, Ilse," he whispered.
His hand moved from the shelf to the wooden frame, blocking my last escape route. He was way too close. I could see the tiny pulse in his neck, the cold, calculated look in his eyes.
"Now," he said, his voice dropping into that dangerous, smooth tone. "Start talking. And for the love of god, stop lying to me. It's starting to get insulting."