I’m running out of time.
The funeral service will be over soon, then all the guests and Roan’s men will flood into the main house for lunch. If I’m caught in here, I’ll have no plausible excuses.
My hands start shaking, my breath turning quick and shallow. I wipe my damp palms on my jeans, trying to get control of myself. There are only two options left: keep searching aimlessly and risk being caught, or call it quits and return to my room while I’m still undiscovered.
I sink into the chair behind Afrim’s desk, fingers digging into the edges of drawers I’ve already searched twice.One more pass. Just one more, and I’ll leave. I skim the wooden surface, tugging the drawers open again, this time tracing every ridge and seam, then I freeze.
One of them doesn’t feel right.
The bottom drawer—the one with the dented edge and a stiff slide—has a tiny gap along the inner panel. It appears seamless at first, but on second touch it feels hollow, like there’s a hidden space behind it. My body stiffens as I start tapping and pressing every surface, searching for the trigger. When my thumb pushes against the back of the drawer, something shifts, followed by a faint click.
My pulse stutters, then surges as a glimmer of hope sparks to life in my chest.
I reach inside the drawer with both hands and pull at the back panel. The false wood pops loose and drops against my leg with a quiet but painful thud that makes me wince. Behindit sits a thick envelope sealed with black wax—an eagle with twin crowns stamped into it.
The Përmeti family insignia.
I gasp, clapping a hand over my mouth as I stare at it for a long, shaky beat, not quite believing my luck. Then I yank it out and flip it open.
Inside is a brittle, yellowed ledger and a folded sheet of paper filled with names, numbers, and dates. At first glance, it looks like yet another outdated record: old inventory logs and messages from years back when the Përmetis were still based in Long Island. But the more I flip through the pages, the more certain I become—this isn’t just a dusty family archive. The fact that it was hidden away in a secret compartment proves it. This has to be coded information.
My pulse kicks into a full sprint until all I can hear is the roaring rush of my own heartbeat.
I take my phone from my pocket and quickly snap pictures of everything—fronts, backs, every detail I can capture. I move fast but carefully, like any sudden movement might trigger an alarm, even though I know that’s ridiculous. Still, I can’t stop my body from shaking.
Once I’m done, I slide it all back into the envelope and return it to the hidden compartment, replacing the false panel to its exact position. Then I get up from behind the desk and hurry out of the office, closing the door behind me without locking it. Just as I found it. No evidence I was ever here.
I want to run out of the mansion and all the way home, but I force myself to walk down the hallway, calm and casual, just in case someone reviews the CCTV footage later.Nothing suspicious here.
As soon as I’m outside, though, the tension in my chest refuses to let me stay composed. I pick up my pace, jogging now, my ears tuned for any sound. Heart hammering, I round the corner too quickly and almost collide with one of Roan’smen—a guard in a dark suit with slightly buzzed hair and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He narrows his eyes at me suspiciously, assessing.
I don’t bother smiling; that would be too weird considering the somber day it is. “Hard to believe the oldshefiis really gone, huh?” I say instead, and don’t have to fake my heavy sigh.
He grunts in response and keeps walking, apparently satisfied I’m not a threat. I wait until he disappears from view before I continue on my way, my pace slowed now to something more normal. But I don’t run into anyone else, and soon the house is right in front of me.
My hands shake uncontrollably as I slip through the front door, every nerve on edge. By the time I make it back into my room, I can barely breathe.
Fuck, that was way too close.
I lock the door behind me and pull the curtains shut before I take my phone out of my pocket and start scrolling through the pictures I took.
The names don’t make sense at first, the numbers meaningless to me. But as I cross-reference the information with open-source databases—published reports, news articles, documented territory changes in the Albanian underground spanning both Long Island and Queens—I start to see the pattern emerging.
The codes line up with real-world events. The dates and names match actual murders, unexplained disappearances, and sudden shifts in power. There are entries dating back more than ten years, and they don’t stop there.
One name keeps recurring throughout the timeline, the one constant factor—Fabian Besharun.
Roan’s uncle. Afrim’s brother-in-law.
The further I read, the more I understand what I’m seeing and how it all pieces together. This isn’t just a ledger—it’s a detailed record of treachery. Every entry seems to documentanother action Fabian has taken to undermine the Albanian stronghold in Queens—to undermine Afrim.
There are details of deals stuck with old Italian families operating in the shadows at the very border between Queens and Brooklyn, cut off from Maximo and Romero’s territories. Neutral ground where anything can happen.
Fabian seems to have been selling critical information about Afrim’s operations to them. Coordinating ambushes. Even authorizing outright kills, carefully framed to look like retaliation from Maximo back when he was still resisting the Albanian expansion—before he fell in love with Elira.
Fabian wasn’t acting alone. He worked closely with a man named Gjon, who I recognize as Afrim’s former second-in-command, before his betrayal was discovered a couple of months ago.
Loyal men working with the Përmeti crew were murdered in the streets, executed under the pretense of gang conflicts or territorial disputes. And Fabian signed off on every one of them.
