The pattern was our first real lead. The list of victims included many prominent figures from European industry over the last thirty years. These were once powerful men, now reduced to mere footnotes in financial history.
"They didn't just kill my father," Dante said, his voice low and threatening as he stared at the list on the screen. "They picked his bones clean."
"They're patient," Elias noted, breaking down the pattern in his mind. "They identify a target and make an offer. If the target refuses, they aren't killed right away. They are isolated and weakened while their allies are eliminated. The murder is the final move in a long, cold game of chess."
We understood their methods, but we still didn't know who they were.
"Some of these families still exist," I said, running my finger down the list. "The Dubois family in Marseille, the Osman family in Istanbul. They lost their leaders and their original companies, but they survived. They rebuilt. They might know something."
"Contacting them is risky," Dante replied. "It shows that we are vulnerable and that we're looking for something we can't find."
"It's riskier not to," I countered. "They survived the same war. They might have a piece of the puzzle we need."
He knew I was right. The next day, he made a secure call. He was reaching out to a ghost of his own. Two days later, a private jet landed, and a formidable old man named Kenan Osman was escorted into the penthouse. He was the head of the Osman family, a man known and feared in the Mediterranean underworld, much like Dante. His face was hawkish, and his eyes were cold.
The meeting was tense. Kenan listened to Dante's story with a stoic expression.
"Your father was a proud man, Moretti. He made enemies," Kenan said, his voice rough. "This sounds like your problem, not mine."
"With all due respect, Mr. Osman," I interjected, my voice steady from my place at the conference table. "It became your problem twenty-five years ago."
I turned the monitor to face him, displaying my research. I showed him the untraceable offer made to his father. I showed him the coordinated attacks on his family's shipping interests in the following months. I also showed him the police report on the boating "accident" that took his father's life.
Kenan Osman stared at the screen, his years of stoicism cracking. I hadn't just shown him data; I had revealed the hidden truth behind his family's greatest tragedy.
"We all thought it was a rival shipping line," he whispered, his voice trembling with decades of misdirected anger. "We destroyed them for it."
He looked from the screen to Dante, a new and terrible understanding passing between the two powerful men.
"My father… before he died, he was paranoid," Kenan said softly. "He spoke of a myth. A group so powerful that they didn't need an army, just an accountant. He said they kept a record of their influence and the debts owed to them. He called it the Devil's Ledger. And the man who kept it… he called him 'The Curator'."