Read Chapter 22: Casino's Offer

The ventilation grate rattled as Alex pressed his back against the steel wall of the service corridor, one hand clamped over the weeping graze on his shoulder. The fabric of his jacket was dark with blood, but the wound had stopped seeping—for now. His face burned where the guard’s taser had arced too close, a raw stripe of blistered skin running from temple to jaw.

He pulled out his phone. One bar of signal through the casino’s concrete. He typed fast.

`Need cover. Service level B2. East stairwell.`

The reply came in seconds from Jules: `Viktor’s men are sweeping B1. Stay low, don’t move.`

Alex pocketed the phone and slid lower against the wall, the ledger’s hard spine digging into his ribs beneath his jacket. His hand drifted to the gashes on his face. He’d pass for a burn victim in a casino that had just had a fire alarm—if anyone stopped to look. But the alarm had long since been reset, and the corridors were quiet. Too quiet.

He needed out. He needed medical attention. He needed to think.

His phone vibrated again. Unknown number. He stared at it a full three seconds before answering.

“You’ve made quite a mess tonight, Alex.”

Delacroix’s voice was smoother than Viktor’s. Polished. A man who wore thousand-euro cufflinks and spoke in measured cadences designed to sound reasonable. Casino COO. The name Alex had extracted from Viktor only hours ago, now calling him directly.

“Henri,” Alex said, keeping his voice level. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“You know my name. Good. Then you know I’m not a man who plays games.” A pause, a soft exhale. “But you’ve left me with quite a problem. A vault breach. A security system failure. A ledger missing from my most trusted manager’s office. The board is… uneasy.”

Alex shifted, biting back a gasp as pain lanced through his shoulder. “Sounds like you’ve got a busy night.”

“I do. Which is why I’ll be brief.” Delacroix’s tone sharpened, the veneer of charm wearing thin. “I want the ledger back. In exchange, I will offer you something Viktor cannot: immunity.”

Alex pressed the phone closer to his ear, as if that would help him read the man’s intent. “Immunity from what, exactly?”

“From the charges that will be filed against you the moment you step outside this building. From the men Viktor will send to collect you. From the syndicate’s debt that you’ve been running from.” Each word landed like a stamp on a dossier. “You’re wounded, Alex. Alone. Your crew is scattered and your transfer is gone. I know what happened in that vault room. I know Viktor reversed the funds before they ever reached your accounts.”

*The transfer*. Alex’s jaw tightened. So the reversal was confirmed. Zoe’s silence on the line earlier made sense now.

“You’re asking me to hand over the only leverage I have,” Alex said. “What stops Viktor from coming at me anyway?”

“Viktor is my employee. A valuable one, but replaceable. I gave him a task—recover the ledger—and he failed. I’m not in the habit of letting failures dictate my terms.” A pause, the rustle of fabric, the clink of something glass against wood. “You and I are not enemies, Alex. We’ve never been. You worked in this building for years. You know what I do and don’t tolerate. I don’t tolerate theft. But I also don’t tolerate loose ends.”

The implication hung in the air: *Give me the ledger, and you’re not a loose end.*

“What about my crew?”

“Your crew is of no interest to me. Their fingerprints are all over the casino’s systems, but I can make that go away. Clean slate. For all of you.”

Alex exhaled slowly, calculating. Delacroix was offering too much, too cleanly. Men like him didn’t offer immunity without wanting something more than a ledger full of manager’s notes. But the ledger was Julia’s—her hand had recorded Favreau’s skims, the shell-company payments, the quiet money laundering through the casino’s junket program. If it implicated Delacroix, the CEO’s eagerness to erase it made sense.

But Julia’s ledger also contained names. Numbers. Pathways that led upward.

“I need time to think,” Alex said.

Delacroix laughed—a short, dry sound. “You’re bleeding in a service corridor while my security sweeps the building. Time is not something you have in abundance.”

“Then give me a reason to trust you.” Alex’s voice was hard. “Right now, you’re just a voice on a phone, asking me to walk into your arms with the only thing that keeps me alive. Make it worth my while.”

A long silence. Alex listened to the hum of the corridor lights, the faint thrum of a generator somewhere below. The race would be over by now. Monaco’s streets would be clogged with departing spectators. The casino would be emptying, its high rollers herded toward taxis and limousines.

“You want proof of good faith,” Delacroix said at last. “Fine. Viktor is scheduled to leave Monaco tomorrow evening. Private jet. Fixed-wing charter filed under a shell company out of Gibraltar. He has no intention of staying to clean up this mess. He’ll take the ledger’s failure on his shoulders, write it off, and be on a beach in Sardinia by nightfall.”

Alex processed this. Viktor running. That meant the syndicate above him was already cutting ties, protecting their assets. Delacroix was offering Alex a chance to be on the right side of that severance.

“And if I say no?”

“Then I let Viktor’s men find you.” Delacroix’s voice turned cold. “And I’ll tell them you’re in the east stairwell. I give you until sunrise to decide. A small mercy. More than Viktor ever offered anyone.”

The line went dead.

Alex stared at the phone, the burn on his face pulsing with his heartbeat. Sunrise. That gave him a few hours, enough to patch his wound, get out of the building, regroup. The question was whether he could trust anything Delacroix said.

He couldn’t. But the COO had just confirmed two things: Viktor was leaving, and Delacroix knew exactly where Alex was hiding.

His phone buzzed again. Zoe.

“Alex, what the hell is going on?” Her voice was tight, stress bleeding through. “We lost the transfer. All of it. The dummy accounts are empty—Viktor’s people zeroed them before I could even check.”

“I know,” Alex said, pushing himself to his feet. The corridor swam for a second, then steadied. “I just got a call from Delacroix. He wants the ledger back. Offered us immunity.”

Silence. Then, carefully: “And you believe him?”

“No. But I need time to figure out who he’s really working for.” Alex limped toward the east stairwell, pressing the phone between his ear and shoulder while he checked the door’s handle. Unlocked. “He told me Viktor’s leaving tomorrow. Private jet. He’s burning his exit path as we speak.”

“So we’re not just out the money—we’re out the job. Viktor takes the ledger’s secrets and disappears, we get nothing.” Zoe swore. “Unless we get to him before he does.”

Alex paused at the top of the stairwell, looking down into the dark. “That’s the play. Viktor engineered this whole thing for the ledger. He’s got somewhere to be tomorrow night. Which means somewhere is where he’s taking it.”

“And what do we do with Delacroix’s offer?”

“We stall. Tell him we need the day to think. Keep him thinking we’re considering his terms, while we follow Viktor to his plane.” Alex started down the steps, each footfall sending a jolt of pain through his shoulder. “But first, I need a place to hole up. I’m bleeding through my jacket and my face looks like overdone steak.”

“I know someone,” Zoe said after a moment. “A loanshark who runs a safehouse near the port. He owes me a favor. A big one.”

“How big?”

“Big enough to keep his mouth shut when two wounded criminals show up at his door.” A pause. “But I’ll have to call in his gambling marker to make it stick.”

Alex reached the base of the stairs and cracked open the door to the parking garage. Empty. A few cameras, but Jules would handle those.

“Make the call,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the port.”

He hung up, pressed his back against the cold concrete, and looked down at the ledger in his hands. Julia’s neat handwriting filled the pages—names, amounts, dates. Somewhere in here was whatever Viktor was desperate to keep buried. Whatever Delacroix wanted to disappear.

Sunrise was four hours away. And Viktor’s plane was leaving tomorrow night.

The clock was ticking faster than Alex’s pulse.