Chapter 47
forty-seven
I stare down at the numbers written in Libby’s journal.
Each number represents a specific part of the book.
The page number followed by the paragraph on that page followed by the word in that paragraph.
Flipping through the pages at the beginning, I turn to the page labeled as the first. My finger slides gently down the page to the third paragraph and over till it finds the sixth word.
Well.
Easy enough. I repeat the process with the second cipher.
Far.
I can already see where this is going, but wanting to be absolutely sure, I follow the cipher one last time.
This one is different. It contains four numbers instead of three and has one in parentheses.
So, the seventh letter in and two of those three letters make the word, which is ‘ago’.
Since ‘ag’ makes little sense, I go with ‘go’.
Well far go.
It doesn’t take a genius to know she’s talking about the bank.
It’s simple, and she doesn’t attempt to obscure the name or make a riddle out of it.
No one other than Kenzi would have known what those numbers referred to.
You have to have the book to decipher it, and not just any version of The Hobbit would get the job done. It needed to be this specific edition.
If it’s a bank she’s leading me to, that means the numbers she listed below are a bank account. 1974762095230091. Are the remaining numbers 091322 the passcode or something else? And what does the hastily scrawled name of Demeter mean?
A passphrase?
Ugh. I close the laptop screen and lean back in my chair, closing my eyes as I rub my temples.
Libby could have left clearer instruction.
Like what Wells Fargo she’s talking about, for example.
Since there are approximately fifteen in Seattle.
If it’s just a bank account, then it wouldn’t matter which I choose, but if it’s a safe deposit box, it would.
Luckily, only a handful of Wells Fargo’s have safety deposit boxes.
“Everything okay in here?”
Cracking an eye open, I look at Vas and shake my head, letting out a rough breath.
“That bad, huh?” he asks, taking a seat in front of me. We’re in Matthias’s office. His old office, since it’s now mine, but everything in it is still exactly as he left it.
I can’t bring myself to change anything. It still smells like him. The light scent of tobacco hangs in the air, mixing deliciously with the warm spiced aftershave he always wears.
“Libby’s secret code leads to a Wells Fargo bank,” I inform him. “But she doesn’t say which one or whether it’s an account or a lock box. Nothing. I’ve got the account number, but that’s it.”
“What about the name and the other set of numbers she listed?” Vas questions. “Any clue what those mean?” I shake my head.
“The six digits could be a passcode,” I sigh. “It can’t be a historical date because it’s dated for September of 2022 and it’s February.”
“What if it’s not a date,” he suggests.
“Then it has to be a passcode.”
Vas’s mouth turns up and his shoulders shrug. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“How very clear of you, Vasily,” I tell him dryly. “Please, be as vague as you possibly can, it thrills me.”
Vas grunts his amusement, his eyes shining. “Could it be another cypher?”
“If it is, then it isn’t with this book.” I gesture to the battered and bloodied copy of The Hobbit on my desk. “There aren’t thirteen paragraphs on page nine, and she wouldn’t have mixed up the cipher.”
The man before me taps his chin lightly as he contemplates what to say next. “What if it is a date?” he wonders aloud. “What if the numbers are mixed up. Instead of September of 2022, what if it’s September of 2013?”
“We’d have to assume that whatever it was took place in Seattle,” I point out. “There would be too much data to go through if we included every event that happened that year worldwide.”
Silence falls over us.
One would think that the six digits are a passcode of sorts.
Or a password. However, a password for a bank account wouldn’t be simply numbers.
It would need to contain letters as well.
The passcode theory is applicable, but only if it’s for verification.
If she’s pointing me to a lock box then she would have needed to lead me to a key, not a bank code.
What is Libby up to?
“Here.” Vas’s deep voice interrupts my thoughts. When I look up from where my eyes are glued to my desk, he’s standing in front of it, holding out a whiskey-filled tumbler. Not my favorite, but I’ll take it.
“Thanks,” I murmur, taking the glass from him. The ice clinks around in the glass, sounding heavy in the enclosed space.
“I love how you redecorated,” Vas drawls as he looks around. “It’s really you.” The teasing smile he holds at the edge of his lips is infectious. His bright eyes light up when I smile at him from behind my glass.
“Couldn’t really bring myself to touch anything,” I admit. “There’s this…gut feeling I have that says he’ll be back. Stupid, I know, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to change anything.”
“Ava—” Vas begins hesitantly.
“Pfft.” I wave him off. “I know it’s stupid. Just humor me, okay? I’ll get around to changing it sooner or later, but right now…right now—” I let out an inaudible sigh and shrug. “I just like how it makes me feel.”
“And how is that?”
“Like at any moment he’ll walk through that door.”
Except he won’t.
He’s dead.
Vas sighs. It’s deep and sad. Leaning back in his chair, his ankle crosses over his opposite knee as he says, “I know what you mean. I’ve been going through the reports on his laptop and feel like I’m snooping.”
“What reports?” I ask curiously.
“We keep all of our dealings on an encrypted black box that’s nestled just inside the laptop,” Vas explains.
“Unless someone takes the laptop apart piece by piece, no one would ever know it’s there.
Plus, it’s linked directly into a program.
So as long as you insert the right username and passcode, it leads you to the box.
Any other combination takes you through the dummy program.
It allows the operation to keep everything off paper as well as making sure there isn’t any electronic trace either. ”
That has me stunned. It’s pretty advanced thinking for the mafia. Not even Hollywood movies have come up with that.
“When you say dealings,” I question, leaning forward in my seat. “Do you mean like the Bratva’s black book?” Vas nods.
Snapping my fingers excitedly, I stand, the chair rolling out from beneath me and hitting the shelves at my back. “That’s it,” I exclaim, rushing from the room.
“What’s it?” Vas trails behind me, hot on my tail.
“Libby mentioned snagging a few of Elias’s black books from his office when you took her back for some of her things,” I tell him, pushing the door to Libby’s old room open. “I went through her room, and I never found anything.”
“I can sense a but coming,” Vas sighs.
“But—” I keep going, ignoring his snide remark. “If you all managed to think about having everything electronically, so would Libby. She was nothing like Mark, but Libby knew her way around a computer. What if she translated everything electronically and locked it up.”
The lightbulb goes off in Vas’s brain. His shoulders straighten and a feral smile crawls across his face. “Damn, she was smart.”
“No doubt.”
Opening her bedside drawer, I pull out the sleek black laptop she was given when she first arrived so she could still complete her schoolwork while they hunted down Elias and Christian.
Flipping open the top, the laptop whirs to life.
“She didn’t have it locked?” Surprise tints his voice. “Who doesn’t lock their laptop?”
I shrug. “Someone who has nothing to hide that isn’t already secure?”
It makes sense. Libby would have only ever had her schoolwork on the computer, which she completed from the safety of the penthouse after Vas had her switched to online classes.
She wouldn’t have needed to lock her laptop.
But she would have protected the information she copied over from Elias’s black books.
The question is—where would she put imperative information on her laptop?
A sub drive is possible, but I’m not seeing anything popping out at me other than her normal school documents.
I think back to what I read in her journal.
The hastily scrawled numbers and name. I assume Demeter is a username I would enter to access a specific file, but there isn’t anything in her files that doesn’t just open.
No passwords are needed for any of them.
Where the fuck did she put it?
“What if it isn’t to a file,” Vas states. “What if it’s to a site or even another account on the laptop.”
“Worth a try.” I log out of the current account to get to the main screen. Nothing. There isn’t even an option to log in to another one. “Wait.” The lightbulb clicks. The dawn rises. It’s all coming full circle. “What was Demeter’s daughter’s name in the Greek myth?”
“Um,” Vas thinks for a moment before the lightbulb dings. “Persephone.”
“Persephone’s Web.” We both say aloud. Persephone’s Web is an underground chat room and dark web encryption hosting platform.
Unlike most of the dark web, Persephone’s Web was created to help people in need find and store vital information on taking down organizations like Elias’s.
Libby and I learned about it from Mark before I pulled a Houdini and disappeared in the dead of night under Elias’s nose.
Persephone is a legend. Having exposed more sex trafficking rings and shady government officials and deals than every law enforcement agency in the world. It’s a safe space for victims or families of victims to find justice without all the expenses.
My fingers move lightning fast, clicking back into Libby’s primary account. I missed it. There’s a small black symbol that blends in with the swirling of her wallpaper in the top right corner of the screen. It’s Demeter’s symbol in Greek mythology. Full stalks of grain.
I double click.
And wait with bated breath as the rainbow icon of the mouse shifts and turns.
“Yes!” I grin broadly when a sub screen pops up before my eyes requesting a password. Entering the digits I saw in her journal, I press enter.
Bingo.
“Holy fucking shitballs, Batman,” Vas murmurs under his breath as file after file pops onto the screen.
“I really hope she labeled these,” I mutter. There’s enough data on the screen that it will take weeks to sift through.
“Well, that’s why there is more than one of us,” Vas winks at me and stands. “Let’s get this back to the compound. We can get the others to help.”
The others.
Maxim and Nikolai have been scarce since I took up the mantle of Pakhan. Dima is apparently out of the country on personal business, and Leon is busy helping build alliances with my Uncle Dante and the Cosa Nostra.
I think.
Or he’s out assassinating them.
Vas hasn’t made it super clear.
At this point, I couldn’t care less.