Chapter 16 - The Hidden Ledger
I did not leave the prison after my conversation with Brooke.
I went straight to the warden's office and demanded the visitation logs and phone records for her cellblock.
Brooke was too connected to sit quietly without attempting to access her father's resources.
Agent Miller and I spent three agonizing hours combing through thousands of encrypted prison phone calls.
Finally, we found an anomaly.
Brooke had been using a contraband cell phone smuggled in by a corrupt guard to call a seemingly disconnected number.
We traced the signal of that disconnected number to a luxury safety deposit facility in downtown Westbridge.
Brooke hadn't memorized the cryptographic keys to her father's fortune; she had physically hidden the ledger.
I immediately drafted a federal search warrant and mobilized a heavily armed SWAT unit.
We descended upon the bank like a thunderstorm, terrifying the wealthy patrons in the marble lobby.
The bank manager tried to delay us, citing client confidentiality and elite privilege.
I pinned the federal warrant to his expensive suit jacket and ordered my team to breach the vault.
The heavy steel door swung open, and we located safety deposit box number 814.
Inside, resting on a bed of red velvet, was a solid state hard drive.
It was the master ledger containing the routing numbers, shell companies, and cryptographic keys to the Sterling empire.
We had just cut off Richard’s blood supply.
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Without this money, he couldn't pay his mercenaries, his corrupt politicians, or his cartel connections.
He was a bleeding shark in an ocean of predators, and it was only a matter of time before he surfaced.
