The Variance

Time in the ledger room lost all meaning. There were no windows, only the constant thumping of the bass from the club outside and the blue glare of the monitor.

Twelve hours in. Arthur had organized the chaos into a coherent spreadsheet.

Twenty-four hours in. He had traced the wire transfers through a labyrinth of shell companies in the Caymans and Liechtenstein.

Arthur worked with a manic intensity. He muttered to himself, reciting actuarial tables and probability curves.

"Variance in sector 7... standard deviation is too high... *heh-hee*... probability of human error is less than 0.04%..."

Luca sat on a leather sofa in the corner, cleaning a massive silver Desert Eagle. He watched Arthur with a mixture of boredom and contempt.

"You talk too much," Luca grunted, running an oil-soaked rag over the barrel of the gun. "You're weirding me out."

"It's the numbers," Arthur said without looking up. "They talk. You just have to listen."

Arthur’s finger hovered over the Enter key. He had found the anomaly.

It wasn't a hack. It wasn't an external theft. It was an internal siphon. A slow, methodical bleeding of the accounts over eighteen months. The money hadn't been stolen; it had been reallocated.

Arthur traced the final IP address. It didn't lead to Russia or China. It led to a penthouse apartment in the Loop.

An apartment leased to *L. Moretti.*

Arthur stopped typing. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.

He looked at Luca. The Bull was inspecting the slide of his gun, humming a tune.

The thief wasn't some unknown hacker. It was Luca. The son was stealing from the father. Luca wasn't panic-stricken because the money was missing; he was panic-stricken because the Don was coming home early, and Luca hadn't finished covering his tracks. He needed Arthur to cook the books, to hide the theft, not to find the thief.

If Arthur told the truth, Luca would kill him to keep the secret.

If Arthur cooked the books, the Don would eventually find out, and he would kill the accountant who hid it.

The probability of survival had just dropped to zero.

* Heh-hee-hee-hee.*

The laugh bubbled up, longer and more hysterical this time.

"What's so funny?" Luca snapped, looking up.

"Nothing," Arthur squeaked, grabbing his inhaler. "Just... a rounding error. A funny little... decimal point."