Chapter 10 - The Man Everyone Underestimated
Trevor closed the door.
Luca drew his weapon.
“Hands where I can see them.”
Trevor obeyed.
Emma stared at him.
All week she had considered him arrogant.
Petty.
A corporate bully.
Now something colder stood in front of her.
“Explain.”
Trevor looked around the abandoned office.
“Charles Reed spent thirty years building an impressive network.”
“You said he works for you.”
“He does now.”
“You're thirty-six.”
“Thirty-eight.”
“That doesn't make your story better.”
Trevor smiled.
“My father was one of Charles's partners.”
Luca said, “Name.”
“Henry Knox.”
Luca went still.
“You know him?”
“Yes.”
Emma looked between them.
“Who?”
Luca lowered the gun slightly.
“Financial Crimes Directorate. Henry Knox was an informant.”
Trevor laughed.
“That's one interpretation.”
“What happened to him?”
“Charles killed him.”
The humor vanished.
Trevor walked toward the desk.
“When I was fourteen, my father disappeared. Police said he ran away after stealing money from his employer.”
Emma understood.
“You spent your life looking for Charles.”
“Yes.”
“So you joined Caldwell Meridian.”
“Eight years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because every path led here.”
Luca asked, “Why humiliate Emma in the interview?”
Trevor looked at her.
“I needed to see whether she was actually David Reed's daughter.”
Emma blinked.
“What does that mean?”
“David was impossible to intimidate.”
“You were testing me?”
“Yes.”
“You're an ass.”
“Also yes.”
Despite everything, Luca almost smiled.
Emma did not.
“You arranged the interview.”
“I arranged for the recruiter to contact you.”
“Why?”
“Because Charles started moving again when Matteo resurfaced.”
“You knew Matteo was Samuel Price?”
“Not initially.”
Luca stepped closer.
“You knew my brother was alive?”
“For six months.”
Luca hit him.
Trevor crashed against the desk.
Emma grabbed Luca's arm.
“Stop.”
Luca's chest heaved.
“You knew.”
Trevor wiped blood from his mouth.
“I needed him in place.”
“My mother mourned him for eleven years.”
“I didn't create that.”
“But you used it.”
“Yes.”
Luca raised his fist again.
Emma stepped between them.
“Not now.”
Luca turned away.
Emma looked at Trevor.
“Who started the storage fire?”
“Charles.”
“The men who took my mother?”
“Martin.”
“The shooter at the terminal?”
“Charles's team.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows David's archive is still missing.”
Emma looked at the files.
“What archive?”
Trevor stared.
“You don't know?”
“No.”
“Then why did David tell Luca you had it?”
“I don't know.”
Trevor's expression changed.
“Maybe he didn't mean literally.”
Emma frowned.
“What?”
“Your father was dying. He had seconds.”
Emma already hated the direction.
“Say it.”
“David said Emma already has the proof.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe the proof isn't an object.”
Luca turned.
“Then what?”
Trevor looked directly at Emma.
“Something David taught her.”
Emma thought of numbers.
Italian.
Her grandmother.
Forensic bookkeeping.
Listening.
Then the pieces connected.
“My memory.”
Trevor frowned.
Emma whispered:
“When I was nineteen, Dad started teaching me accounting.”
“Why?”
“I thought he was helping me with college.”
She remembered late nights at the dining table.
Invented companies.
Fake invoices.
Exercises where he asked her to identify inconsistencies.
Numbers that seemed random.
Or weren't.
“He used real data.”
Luca understood first.
“David trained you on the network.”
Emma sat down.
“No.”
“He couldn't safely store everything.”
Trevor leaned forward.
“So he taught the patterns to you.”
Emma's mind raced.
A trucking company with impossible fuel costs.
A warehouse paying insurance premiums twice.
A vendor whose invoice numbers skipped in deliberate sequences.
She remembered them.
Because David made her solve them again and again.
“He put the archive in my head.”
Trevor smiled.
“That's why Charles has watched you.”
Emma felt sick.
“But I don't remember account names.”
“You don't need to.”
Luca placed David's notebook beside her.
“The patterns match.”
They spent two hours reconstructing what Emma remembered.
Every fake exercise from college lined up with actual vendor codes in David's notebook.
One sequence revealed a bank account.
Another revealed dates.
Then Emma found a recurring number:
It had been the answer to one of her father's strangest exercises.
She searched David's files.
No result.
Trevor said, “Could be a password.”
“For what?”
Luca opened the silver drive Evelyn gave them.
Security footage appeared.
They watched Martin poison two glasses.
Jonathan drink.
David drink.
Evelyn enter.
Chaos.
Then Charles Reed appeared.
Emma's entire body went cold.
Her uncle entered through a rear door less than one minute after paramedics left with Jonathan.
David was still moving.
Charles knelt beside him.
The recording had no sound.
Emma leaned closer.
Charles said something.
David responded.
Charles reached into David's jacket.
Took a phone.
Then stood.
He left his own brother on the floor.
Emma's eyes filled.
“That bastard.”
Trevor stared at the screen.
“We have him.”
“No,” Luca said.
“That's accessory to murder.”
“Video proves he was there. Not the network.”
Emma watched again.
David's hand moved weakly.
Three fingers.
Seven.
One.
Nine.
Emma froze.
“Stop.”
Luca paused.
“Go back.”
He did.
David looked directly toward the hidden camera.
Raised his hand.
Emma whispered:
“He knew the camera was there.”
She entered 7319 into the encrypted folder on her father's laptop.
It opened.
Hundreds of gigabytes appeared.
Emails.
Bank transfers.
Recorded conversations.
Corporate ledgers.
The entire network.
Trevor whispered, “David won.”
Then the office windows exploded.
Glass rained across the room.
Luca threw Emma down.
A second shot struck the wall.
Trevor crawled toward cover.
Outside, a sniper shifted position.
Charles had found them.
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And this time, he wasn't trying to recover the archive.
He was trying to erase everyone who knew it existed.
