Chapter Six: The Plan
They worked through the night.
Elena brought her laptop to Dante’s room. Pulled up the files on the USB drive. Started organizing.
Names. Addresses. Financial records. Wire transfers. Photographs of meetings that should never have happened.
Marcus Valdez. Age 45. Head of the Valdez crime syndicate. Married, three children, lives in a gated community in Bellevue.
Also on the board of two charities. A major donor to the Seattle Children’s Hospital. A man who’d never been convicted of a single crime.
“He’s untouchable,” Elena said.
“No one’s untouchable.” Dante pointed at the screen. “Look at the third file. The one labeled ‘Offshore.’”
Elena opened it.
Spreadsheets. Dozens of them. Accounts in the Caymans. In Switzerland. In Singapore.
Millions of dollars. Maybe billions.
“This is everything,” she breathed. “His entire financial network.”
“It took me five years to get that.”
“How?”
Dante hesitated.
“I had someone inside. Someone close to Marcus. Someone who wanted out.”
“What happened to them?”
Dante didn’t answer.
Elena understood.
“We need to go to the FBI,” she said. “This is federal jurisdiction. Money laundering. Racketeering. They can make this stick.”
“The FBI has leaks. Marcus has people everywhere.”
“Then we go to someone who doesn’t have leaks.”
Dante raised an eyebrow.
“My brother,” Elena said. “The firefighter. He served in Afghanistan. His best friend from the Army works in the Justice Department. Organized Crime Division.”
“You trust him?”
“I trust my brother. And my brother trusts him.”
Dante thought about it.
“It’s a risk.”
“Everything’s a risk.” Elena closed the laptop. “But sitting here, doing nothing, waiting for Marcus to kill everyone I love? That’s not a risk. That’s a death sentence.”
She stood up.
“I’m calling my brother.”
Dante didn’t stop her.
