Rafa Ortega set the ledger on the desk in front of Valdés.
Valdés rested one hand on the cover.
“You wanted proof.”
“I want the truth.”
“I’m showing you both.” He opened the ledger but kept it on his side of the desk. “You look. You don’t touch.”
Mia stepped closer.
“You won’t understand every column,” Valdés said. “Most of my own accountants can’t follow half of it without me standing over their shoulder.”
He turned to a section and angled the ledger so she could see.
Page numbers. Account codes. Dates. Handwritten initials in the margins.
“Watch the dates,” Valdés said.
He traced down the page with one finger. “Every one of these lands within a week of a major card. Mine, his, doesn’t matter. Before the fight, after it. The money follows the cards.”
He picked up a pen from beside the ledger and wrote one word in the margin beside the first entry.
CRUZ.
The red ink stood out against the black figures covering the page.
Then he moved to the next.
CRUZ.
And another.
CRUZ.
“These are his?”
“These are the ones I can tie to him.”
“That tells you he was moving money before the fights. It doesn’t tell me what any of it has to do with Luis.”
“Not yet.” Valdés looked down at the ledger. “But this is where it starts getting closer to you.”
He flipped forward through several pages of debt entries.
A shortened name caught Mia’s eye as one page turned.
DARIO R.
A number had been circled twice beside it. A location was scrawled underneath in different ink.
“Wait.”
Valdés stopped.
“Go back.”
He turned the page back.
Mia leaned closer.
“Carla’s brother.”
Valdés looked at the entry. “You know him?”
“I know she’s been looking for him.”
Mia fixed the page in her memory. The name. The circled number. The location beneath it.
Valdés turned forward several pages and stopped.
“Here.”
Mia leaned closer.
The entry ran across a single line.
03/17 | SEC-4417 | SECURITY SERVICES | $18,500 | R2
“R2?” He waited but Mia’s expression was blank.
“Round two,” Valdés said. “He told his people you’d go down in the second.”
Mia looked at the date.
“The night of the fight.”
“Yes.”
Valdés picked up the pen again and underlined $18,500 twice. Beside it, he wrote CRUZ.
Her eyes moved back to the amount. “Eighteen thousand five hundred dollars for security?”
“That’s how Cruz filed it.”
“What was the money for?”
Valdés held her gaze.
“The books don’t say.” He tapped the entry. “But whatever Cruz was doing, he wasn’t doing it alone.”
Mia looked at Rafa. At the square silver watch on his wrist.
“Luis saw the SUV hanging around outside the flat after Cruz threatened me. The idiot went out walking with his phone, trying to get something on it. He filmed Cruz beside the vehicle before he died.”
Valdés looked up.
“Cruz was with someone. Luis didn’t get his face, just part of a dark jacket and his hand.” She kept her eyes on Rafa. “He got the watch.”
Rafa went still.
Valdés followed her gaze. “That watch?”
“That watch.”
Valdés turned toward Ortega. “Were you with Cruz?”
“He wanted to talk about security for the card.”
“Did I send you?”
Rafa hesitated. “No.”
Valdés looked back at the ledger. “And the night Luis died, Cruz moved eighteen-five out of one of my security accounts.”
“I didn’t take his money.”
Valdés looked at him. “But you met with him.”
“He wanted to talk about security for the card.”
“Without telling me.”
Rafa said nothing.
Valdés watched him for a moment. “Who did the money go to?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I’m telling you I didn’t take it.”
“Then tell me who did.”
Rafa’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. His eyes stayed on Valdés as Valdés reached for the drawer beside him and slid it open.
There was no rush to the movement. Valdés took out the pistol, the suppressor already threaded onto the barrel, and rested his forearm along the edge of the desk.
Rafa watched him. He didn’t reach for his own weapon as that would only decide how many bullets Valdés put into him.
Valdés aimed at his thigh and fired.
The shot was a hard, muffled cough. Rafa hit the wall and dropped against it, both hands going to his leg as blood spread quickly through the fabric.
Something shifted outside the office door.
“Boss?”
“Stay outside,” Valdés said.
A pause.
“Everything good?”
“I said stay outside.”
Valdés reached beneath the edge of the desk and pressed something. A heavy bolt drove into place inside the door with a solid mechanical clunk.
Silence followed.
Valdés kept the pistol pointed at Rafa. “Take the gun out. Two fingers. Throw it over there.”
Rafa drew it slowly, then tossed it across the room.
Valdés lowered his own pistol and set it on the desk.
“You’ve shown me Cruz moving money. Where does any of this connect to Luis?”
Valdés ran his finger across the entry.
“March seventeenth. The night of your fight. SEC-4417 is one of my security accounts. Eighteen thousand five hundred dollars went out.”
His finger stopped at the final column.
“This column records the reason for the expense.”
R2.
“Round two,” Mia said.
“Exactly. That same night, eighteen-five leaves security with R2 given as the reason.”
Mia stared at the amount. “You think that paid for Luis.”
“I think it paid whoever dealt with the consequences of you getting back up.”
“That’s not proof.”
“No. The books don’t record murders like receipts. Nobody writes kill Luis Herrera next to a dollar figure.” Valdés sat back. “But I know what my people charge for certain kinds of work, Mia. Eighteen-five wasn’t paying for a couple of extra guards at an arena.”
He let her look at the entry for another moment.
“I think you’re looking at the payment for the man who killed Luis.”
Valdés turned back through the ledger, stopping at the entries he had already shown her. CRUZ appeared again and again in the margins, each one in his handwriting.
“The dates match. The payments match. The accounts lead back to him. I can show you the money moving, Mia. I can’t make you believe what it means.”
He looked down at the R2 transaction again.
Then he picked up the pen and wrote beneath CRUZ in hard block letters.
FUCKING TRAITOR.
He dropped the pen onto the desk.
Mia studied the entry for another moment before looking up.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have people all over this city,” Mia said.
“And if Cruz realizes I know what he’s been doing, he’ll disappear before any of them get close.”
Mia glanced at Rafa. “Then we need to find him.”
Valdés followed her gaze.
“Phone.”
Rafa took one hand away from his wounded leg and reached slowly inside his jacket. He drew out the phone by its edge. Dark green leather case, worn pale along the edges.
He flipped open the cover and entered six digits with his thumb.
Mia watched.
Zero four one nine seven two.
The screen unlocked.
“Check the leadership channel,” Valdés said.
Rafa opened it and scanned the screen.
“Nothing from Cruz.”
Mia looked at him. “So how do we find Cruz?”
Valdés regarded her across the desk.
“I want him,” Mia said. “You find out where he is, I’ll take care of the rest.”
Something almost like approval moved across Valdés’s face.
“Then perhaps we’ve found your first job.”
Mia stared at him.
“You want Cruz. I want the traitor removed from my organization.” Valdés settled back in his chair. “Come work for me. I’ll give you the people and resources to find him. When you do, what happens next is your decision.”
For a moment, Mia said nothing.
“You keep doing this.” Her voice came out flatter than she meant, exhaustion pressing through the words. “Using people.”
Valdés watched her.
“Cruz used Luis to get at me. Carla’s brother was a debt you could use to control her. Cruz bought people inside your security operation because they were already used to doing whatever needed doing.” She glanced at the ledger. “And now Luis is dead, Cruz has betrayed you, and you look at me and see someone who might be useful.”
“I didn’t kill Luis.”
“I know.”
“Then what exactly are you blaming me for?”
Mia looked at the closed ledger.
“All of it.”
Something changed in Valdés’s face.
“You built this,” she said. “The fights. The debts. The people who hurt whoever they’re told to hurt. The cops who look the other way. Cruz didn’t build any of that. You did.”
“Cruz acted without my authority.”
“And that’s supposed to make you innocent?”
“It makes his actions his own.”
Mia shook her head. “He used your people. Your money. Your security. Your name. Your coin.”
Valdés’s expression hardened slightly.
“You want me to take responsibility for every decision made by every man who works for me?”
“I want you to stop pretending Cruz came out of nowhere.”
“He betrayed me.”
“No. He learned from you.”
For the first time, Valdés said nothing.
Mia stepped closer to the desk.
“Luis is dead because Cruz decided he was useful dead. And you’ve spent this entire conversation showing me the evidence, telling me how badly he betrayed you.” She held Valdés’s gaze. “Then you looked at what happened to me and did exactly the same thing he did.”
Valdés frowned. “I offered you protection.”
“You offered me a job.”
“I offered you a future.”
“No. You saw someone with nowhere left to go and figured that made me easier to own.”
“I don’t own the people who work for me.”
“Tell that to Carla’s brother.”
Valdés’s jaw tightened.
Mia nodded toward the ledger.
“That’s the part you don’t understand. You think because you didn’t give the order to kill Luis, none of this belongs to you.”
Valdés leaned back slightly. “Then what do you want from me?”
“Nothing.”
“And what do you think changes because you’ve decided I’m a bad man?”
“Nothing.” Mia held his gaze. “I just needed to know whether you were part of this.”
“And now?”
“Now I know.”
The faint amusement disappeared from his face.
“You never meant to take my offer,” he said. “You just wanted me to show you what I knew.”
Mia held his gaze.
“And what happens now?”
For a moment, nobody moved.
The muffled roar of the crowd rose through the floor beneath them, swelling around something happening in the cage before fading again. Rafa sat against the wall with one hand pressed to his wounded leg, watching both of them.
Valdés’s eyes stayed on Mia.
Then they dropped to the pistol.
It lay between them beside the ledger, the suppressor extending across the polished wood.
Mia saw the decision settle in his face.
Valdés moved.
His hand shot across the desk.
Mia went for him at the same instant, but the room tipped sideways and her balance went with it. She caught the desk with one hand, vision swimming for half a second.
By the time everything snapped back into place, Valdés had the pistol in his hand.
Mia caught his wrist before he could bring the weapon up. Valdés drove into her, forcing her backward until her hip struck the edge of the desk. Pain tore through her side and weakened her grip, and the muzzle swung between them as they fought for control.
MIa trapped his wrist against the desk with both hands and dropped her weight onto it. Valdés wrenched upward, nearly throwing her off, but Mia drove his hand back down against the wood.
Once.
Again.
His fingers opened.
Mia ripped the pistol free and stumbled backward, putting the desk between them.
Valdés straightened slowly. His breathing was heavy now, but his eyes stayed on the gun in Mia’s hand.
She leveled it at him.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
“Did you plan to kill me the moment you walked through that door?”
“No.”
Valdés glanced at the pistol, then back at her.
“When, then?”
Mia thought about the ledger. About Luis. About everything Valdés had shown her and what he had offered afterward.
“When you showed me what Cruz had done, then tried to turn Luis into a recruitment pitch.”
“Cruz is still the man who killed him. Killing me changes nothing about that.”
“I know.”
She fired once.
The shot punched through the room, dull and heavy. Her bad ear still answered with another spike of ringing. Valdés slid sideways against the desk and didn’t get up.
Mia looked at Rafa.
He stayed against the wall and lifted both hands away from his body, palms open.
A fist hit the office door.
“Boss?”
Mia looked toward it.
Another knock, harder this time.
“Boss?”
The deadbolt held.
Mia lowered the pistol but kept it in her hand as her eyes went to the ledger.
Valdés had been right about one thing. She couldn’t walk out carrying it.
Another impact shook the door.
Her eyes shifted to the phone beside it.
Zero four one nine seven two.
Mia grabbed the phone and entered the six digits.
The phone unlocked.
She set the pistol on the desk beside her, close enough to reach without taking her eyes off Rafa.
Then she opened the camera and dragged the ledger toward her.
Another fist hit the door.
Mia flipped through the ledger, stopping wherever Valdés had scribbled in red ink.
Photograph. Turn the page. Another.
The R2 payment. Security. The vehicle expense. FUCKING TRAITOR.
“You killed Valdés. They’ll come after you,” Rafa said.
“They already are.”
The door shook again.
“Boss?”
Mia kept flipping.
DARIO R. The circled number. The location beneath it.
She took the photograph and snapped the ledger shut.
Another impact hit the door, harder than the last.
Mia slipped the phone into her pocket and picked up Valdés’s pistol.
Her eyes dropped to the half-open drawer beside the desk.
She pulled it wider.
Inside, a shallow black tray held a lighter, a signet ring, and a brass coin.
Mia picked it up.
The desk lamp caught the crown above a coiled serpent.
She slipped the coin into her pocket.
Her eyes went to the katana on the wall.
Valdés had told her how he got it. By his own rules, it was hers now and she wanted it.
Another heavy impact struck the office door.
Mia looked toward the sound, then back at the sword.
Not tonight.
She turned to Rafa.
He was still against the wall, his wounded leg stretched out in front of him, blood darkening the carpet beneath it.
Mia looked at him. “Where’s Cruz?”
“His office.”
“You know that?”
Rafa breathed through his teeth. “He was preparing to leave before you got here. Back lot. Private parking.”
“Why tell me?”
Rafa looked at Valdés, then down at the blood soaking his trouser leg.
“Look where covering for him got me.”
Mia held his eyes for another second, then turned away.
The next impact against the main office door was heavy enough to shake it in the frame.
Mia crossed to the bank of security monitors and scanned them fast, the pistol in one hand, the other pressed against her ribs where blood had soaked through the wrap.
Men were crowding the corridor outside the office. One stepped back from the door while another moved forward with something heavy in both hands.
The bolt had bought her seconds. Nothing more.
Her eyes went to the second door at the far side of the room.
She crossed to it and pushed the handle down.
A narrow concrete stairwell dropped steeply behind it, lit by small emergency lamps fixed low along one wall.
Mia went down fast, the pistol held low in one hand, the other sliding along the rail. At the bottom, the stairs opened into a short service passage with a steel door at the far end.
Above her, the office door gave way with a splintering crash. Voices flooded into Valdés’s office above, sharp and overlapping.
Mia crossed the passage, shoved through the steel door, and stepped into the cold night air.
She stopped just long enough to look around.
The alley.
A few yards down, she recognized the unmarked entrance she had watched earlier, the one the man in the suit, the woman in heels, and the man carrying the slim case had disappeared through when she arrived.
She knew exactly where she was.