CHAPTER 25: THE LEDGER'S GIFTS
The subway deposited me in Queens just after midnight.
My apartment waited in the same state I'd left it—bare walls, bare mattress, the same anonymous space where I'd woken up in a stranger's body a month ago. Only now I carried eighty thousand dollars in a shoulder bag and a dead man's secrets in my pocket.
Home sweet home.
I locked all three deadbolts, checked the windows out of habit, and dropped the bag of cash onto the mattress. The flash drive came out next—a slim black rectangle no bigger than my thumb. Sergei's insurance policy. Whatever had been worth dying to protect.
The laptop hummed to life on my kitchen counter. I'd bought it from a pawn shop in Chinatown two weeks ago—cash, no ID, paid a homeless guy to make the actual purchase. Paranoia, maybe. But I'd learned that in this world, paranoia was just another word for survival.
If Chen taught me anything, it's that careful people live longer.
The flash drive slotted into the USB port with a soft click.
Folders populated the screen. Dozens of them. Russian labels mixed with English, dates stretching back years.
The first folder contained financial records. Transaction logs, bank statements, routing numbers. I opened a random file and saw columns of figures that made my eighty-thousand-dollar windfall look like pocket change. Millions flowing through shell companies, offshore accounts, payment schedules to names I didn't recognize.
Corruption payments. Bribes. The infrastructure of the Tarasov empire.
The second folder held property records. Warehouses in Red Hook—one of which I recognized from my first kill. Safe houses in Brighton Beach. Commercial real estate throughout Brooklyn. Viggo Tarasov owned half the borough through paper companies.
The third folder made my heart rate spike.
Security schedules. Personnel rotations. Camera placements. Not for the entire organization—just for one location.
Red Circle.
I leaned closer to the screen.
The Red Circle nightclub. Iosef Tarasov's favorite hunting ground, according to the files. Weekly security reports, staff schedules, VIP reservation lists. And at the bottom of the folder, a document dated two days ago: TONIGHT'S DEPLOYMENT.
This is current intel.
I cross-referenced with what I knew from the movies. The Red Circle was where Wick would strike—where he'd massacre his way through Viggo's security to reach Iosef. The scene had been iconic. Bodies stacking like cordwood while the bass kept thumping.
The security schedule showed deployment for tomorrow night. Friday. Enhanced detail because Iosef planned to be there.
Tomorrow night. The Red Circle massacre is tomorrow night.
My hands hovered over the keyboard.
This information was worth more than the cash I'd stolen. The right buyer—someone like the Bowery King, maybe, or a rival organization—would pay a fortune for Tarasov's dirty laundry. Account numbers. Property deeds. Evidence of corruption that could burn half the NYPD's organized crime unit.
Or I could use it myself.
The Ledger pulsed at the edge of my awareness. I focused on it, let the supernatural record fill my consciousness.
[BOUNTY BOARD — LOCAL] [SIDE CONTRACT AVAILABLE] [TARGET: VIKTOR IVANOV] [LOCATION: RED CIRCLE NIGHTCLUB] [DESIGNATION: BRONZE] [REWARD: 100 BLOOD COINS] [NOTE: TARGET SKIMMED FROM TARASOV OPERATION. ORGANIZATION TOO BUSY TO HANDLE INTERNALLY. CLEANUP WELCOME.]
Viktor Ivanov. Drug dealer. Red Circle regular, according to the contract details. The Tarasovs wanted him dead, but with Wick carving through their ranks, nobody had time for internal housekeeping.
Same location. Same timeframe. Different target.
The plan crystallized.
I'd hit the Red Circle tomorrow night. In and out before Wick arrived—use the security schedules to time my entry, complete the Ivanov contract, disappear into the chaos. Let the Baba Yaga take the blame for any bodies I left behind.
Vulture thinking. Again.
I copied the flash drive's contents to a burner USB, then wiped the laptop's cache. The original drive went into a plastic bag, then into the toilet tank behind the bowl. Old spy trick. Nobody searched there first.
The laptop I'd destroy tomorrow. Burn the hard drive, scatter the pieces across different dumpsters. Clean.
The Ledger updated while I was hiding evidence.
[TARASOV SOLDIERS: -28] [BOUNTY HUNTERS: -11] [JOHN WICK: ACTIVE — LAST KNOWN: MANHATTAN]
Twenty-eight soldiers. Eleven bounty hunters. The numbers had jumped since I'd left JFK.
He's not slowing down.
I thought about Elena's warning at the Continental. You're new. You don't understand what John Wick is. She'd been right. The stories didn't capture it. Watching the numbers climb in real-time, seeing an entire criminal empire bleed out one body at a time—that was something else entirely.
And tomorrow night, I'm going to be in the same building as him.
The thought should have terrified me. A month ago, it would have. But I'd killed eleven people since waking up in this body. I'd adapted to violence the way you adapt to a new climate—uncomfortable at first, then routine, then just... normal.
One more contract. One hundred Blood Coins. In and out before the real killing starts.
I set an alarm for 6 PM. Plenty of time to prepare.
The mattress felt harder than usual as I lay down. The shoulder bag full of cash made an uncomfortable pillow. But I'd slept on worse—in Syria, in my previous life, in circumstances I tried not to remember.
Tomorrow night. Red Circle. Don't die.
Sleep came faster than expected.
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