Page 27 of Prospect’s Curvy Vinyl Girl

Martino's node appears. The Tuesday collections.

I don't just delete his ledger. Deleting it makes him a victim of a hack. I need him to be a traitor. I need his own people to eliminate him.

I pull up one of my burned covers. The old Albuquerque grifter identity. I use it to set up a dummy offshore account in the Cayman Islands. I route it through three different shell corporations, burying the origin so deep it looks like a federal informant stash.

Then, I start bleeding the Syndicate's money.

I slice twenty thousand dollars off the top of the Eastern Route collections spanning the last six months. Small increments. Unnoticeable at first glance. I deposit the stolen funds into the offshore account I just created under Martino’s legal name.

Next comes the paper trail. I generate a complex, encrypted email chain linking Martino's personal IP address to a known FBI tip line. I backdate the timestamps. I draft the emails carefully, making the language sound like a desperate, greedy mid-level enforcer trying to cut an immunity deal by turning state's evidence against his own Lieutenant.

Thirty-four minutes pass in hyper-focused silence. My fingers fly across the keys. The beast inside me quiets, watching the destruction unfold on the screen. This is my war. This is my violence. Every line of code serves as a knife in his back. Every fabricated bank transfer acts as a bullet in his skull.

I’m erasing his existence from the earth.

At 2:48 a.m., I compile the package. The offshore bank statements, the missing twenty thousand dollars, the backdated FBI emails. The perfect frame job.

I route the package to the personal, heavily encrypted drop box of the Syndicate Lieutenant.

I hit execute.

The loading bar fills. The green text flashes. Transmission complete.

"Package landed." Elias again, quiet, reading the same server from the Chapel forty miles north. "Their ledger balances to the penny—against Martino. To his own boss, he stole from the family and ran to the feds." A pause. "Clean work, prospect. Kill the connection and come home."

The line dies. I snap the laptop shut. The heavy darkness of the Civic returns, total and silent.

Martino is dead. He’s sleeping in apartment 3B, unaware that he’s already a corpse. By dawn, the Lieutenant’s men will kick his door down. They’ll drag him out into the woods, and they’ll put a bullet in the back of his head for being a rat.

They’ll never look at the Vinyl Vault. They will never look at Wendy. The Syndicate will handle their own trash.

I solved the problem. I protected my woman. I didn't leave a single drop of blood for her to clean up.

A dark satisfaction settles in my chest, anchoring me. I drop the Civic into gear. I drive back to her.

Crimson Hollow remains a graveyard at three in the morning. I drive a deliberate, winding route, constantly checking my mirrors, ensuring the streets stay empty. No tail. No headlights.

I park the Civic two blocks away from the Vinyl Vault, tucking it behind an abandoned hardware store.

I walk the rest of the way. The freezing wind whips my jacket around me.

The shop comes into view. The brick facade stands tall in the dark. The faded painted sign hangs motionless. The front is locked up tight. Silent. Secure.

I approach from the rear alley. I bypass the secondary alarm sensor I wired myself yesterday afternoon. I unlock the steel security door and slip inside.

The deadbolt slides home behind me with a solid, metallic thud.

Safe. She’s safe. The perimeter holds.

The smell of the shop washes over me. It hits my system like a drug. Warm dust, old paper sleeves, oak wood, and the faint, sweet scent of Wendy's shampoo.

The main shop floor is pitch black, but a faint amber glow spills out from beneath the beaded curtain of the back room.

She’s awake.

I strip off my jacket, tossing it over a stack of unsorted crates. I toss my keys onto the counter. I grip the manila folder I stole from Martino’s car.

I push through the beads.