She turned the page, and the pattern repeated. The ledger had week after week of detailed counts, locations, and notations, often with little side marks like an asterisk beside unusually high yields, a smallpto indicate pelts shipped, and in some cases, a check mark next to tallies that had clearly been adjusted downward in the public-facing reports.
There was no mistaking what she was looking at. This wasn’t a rough estimate. It was an internal account of every seal harvested, including the ones never declared to the government. And it meant the ACC had never paid the government bounties on over one hundred thousand seals. How could they, when they were allowed to kill only two hundred thousand?
She flipped forward several pages, her chest tight. At the end of the ledger, a neat table compared three columns—Total Harvested, Reported Harvest,andGovernment Bounty Paid.
Her pulse quickened as she studied the numbers. The totals didn’t add up. The difference between what had been harvested and what had been reported was staggering. She traced the columns with her finger, doing the math in her head line by line.
The unreported kills amounted to about one hundred thousand seals. If each pelt carried the usual bounty, then the government was owed more than two hundred thousand dollars. And her father’s company had kept nearly that much in profits—almost one hundred and eighty thousand—by lying on their reports.
She blew out a breath. God had answered her prayers after all. This wasn’t the bribery list she’d been looking for. It was much more.
The northern fur seal was going extinct, and poaching at sea was rampant. Yuri’s older brother Sacha had commissioned a report about how the quota for harvesting two hundred thousand seals was far too large given how quickly the population was dwindling, and newspapers had printed the report in every paper along the Pacific Coast after it had been released, sparking a debate about just how many seals should be harvested.
Her father and uncle had naturally insisted that taking two hundred thousand seals a year wasn’t harming the population, but even she had noticed a decline in the number of seals in Sitka Sound, and she’d only been here four years. People like Freya who had lived in Sitka their whole lives couldn’t stop talking about how they never saw seals anymore.
She opened the next ledger, then swallowed as she stared down at the tally of names, dates, and monetary amounts. Some names she recognized, like the foreman who managed the Saint George Island seal camp and the accountant who oversaw shipments out of Dutch Harbor, but most she didn’t. Still, the pattern was clear. These were bribes labeled as either “specialallowances” or “discretionary bonuses.” She opened the first ledger again and quickly saw that the payment tallies coincided with harvest spikes and false reporting periods noted in the first ledger.
Every payout was tied to someone who had the power to overlook a discrepancy, such as a local inspector, a ship captain, or a government clerk.
She flipped through page after page, watching the sums rise. Some payouts were as small as fifty dollars, but a few crept into the thousands.
Once again, she tallied the numbers in her head and calculated that the ACC had made a profit of nearly two hundred and twenty thousand dollars after all the bribery payments.
She sat back on her heels, the two ledgers heavy in her lap.
If she turned this information over to the authorities, it just might be enough to ruin the Alaska Commercial Company’s standing with the US government. It would certainly be enough evidence to land her father and uncle and anyone else who’d had a hand in running the company in prison permanently.
And she knew exactly what she needed to do with it.
22
“So there we were, eating dinner, and Alexei couldn’t keep his eyes off her.” Sacha waved his fork over his plate, never mind he nearly ended up flinging a piece of baked salmon across the room.
“Yes, but did he smile?” Yuri leaned back in his chair, soaking in the fun of having Sacha and Alexei sitting around the cramped table. They’d arrived that morning, but this was the first meal they’d sat down to as a family.
“I could keep my eyes off Laurel perfectly fine.” Alexei scowled at Sacha, who sat around the corner from his place at the head of the table. “It just so happened that there was nothing else in the room worth looking at.”
Mikhail slapped him on the back. “Are you falling in love, brother?”
“I am not falling in anything.” Alexei stabbed a piece of salmon on his plate with unnecessary force. “Laurel Farnsworth and I are just friends.”
“That’s why he took her for a walk after dinner.” Sacha winked. “Because they’re just friends.”
Laughter erupted around the table.
Or rather, everyone except Alexei laughed. He just sat there with a deepening scowl.
“I can already see it in my mind.” Yuri took a sip of water. “Alexei will fall in love with this woman and move to San Francisco, where he wanted to be all along.”
“I just told you I’m not in love with her.” Alexei set his fork down with a thud. “And I told her father no to the job too. Times change.”
Yuri’s laughter died so fast, it felt like the air had been sucked from the room. Across the table, Sacha stopped eating mid-bite, a piece of salmon dangling from his fork. Even Maggie had stilled with her teacup halfway to her mouth.
“What job?” Mikhail leaned forward in his chair, his golden eyes pinned to Alexei.
Alexei pinched the bridge of his nose and sucked in a breath. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything about it. I’m tired and being careless with my words.”
“Farnsworth offered you a job?” Sacha frowned. “When was this? You didn’t say anything to me about it.”
