CHAPTER 7

 

Things hadn't been going so well in the house for some days now, Dante has been giving him cold shoulders every since, but then came the night that changed everything.

Rafe was alone with the ledgers that were supposed to condemn the Devils. The main floor was already quiet. The atmosphere was heavy as usual. No drunken chaos or unnecessary noise. The room was empty, just him and the long conference table.

He sat there waiting,,, “maybe this is also part of the test.”

Rafe was trained for two years to infiltrate the Crimson Devils and take them down. He is the mole, the instrument of the law, and the ultimate outsider. He's highly disciplined,and mentally controlled, adhering strictly to his duty.

"Eliminate them all". That was the order. Two years of brutal training, rehearsed habits, and carefully constructed lies had led Rafe Santos now standing at the gates. The narrative was clean and convincing.

The Devils were a violent motorcycle club laundering money for the infamous Moretti crime family.

Monsters hiding behind leather and engines. Rafe was trained to dismantle these monsters. Observe, Report, and Destroy. That was why he was here.

He opened the heavy ledger toward Rafe. He ran his fingers over the handwritten numbers. He kept his voice calm, professional. Even though he was having a burning sensation inside, he still explained the ledger errors, pointed out inefficiencies, and suggested corrections.

Some of the non profit needs a better percentage for the international funds. Rafe checked the secondary accounts. The money flowed in high volumes. He calculated and controlled everything in his mind. But the numbers were fighting back.

He erased it, but the slip was already noted. He recalculated the percentages, fetching some specific ledgers. He was digging through sealed Moretti records. He looked at the offshore accounts. The raw data for the cycle of the failed laundering accounts.

Rafe found the first error in the case.

Then another, Then too many to ignore.

He paused for a second, his eyes widening in confusion .

What was really going on here? He asked himself.

He stared at the paper. His pulse quickened and troubled his soul. He took a deep breath as the numbers didn't make sense for a corrupt justice and personal vendetta.

 The money wasn't disappearing into offshore accounts. The math was clean. Too clean. It was not a small time bar profits. It was a massive sacrifice for love.

Rafe’s training screamed at him to maintain distance, to establish professional boundaries. But his breath caught. He traced the lines of the businesses, restaurants, auto-repair shops, and even a non-profit charity.

 The charity wasn't fake. It was real. The accounts were linked to civilian contractor records.

He felt pain at his back. Not from Dante. But from the truth. The discovery destroys the mission into something deeply personal. Rafe was alone. The silence ruled on longer with things neither of them said aloud.

 He realized the truth, He could no longer tell the reason he was there.

The ledgers were not a weapon. They were a shield.

Rafe’s hands were unsteady. He couldn't trust himself to speak or even move. He kept digging. Digging through sealed Moretti records. He pulled out the binders. He checked the dates. He checked the names. He checked the license plate number,the men's faces, and the quiet way they all moved. It was a pattern, one he just couldn't understand.

Everything was a lie well prepared from papers and silence. But this was not the Devils lie. The FBI lied. They didn't tell him this, or maybe they didn't know…