THE DEVIL'S LEDGER

Loud Enough to Hear

The envelope has a Vantage seal pressed into wax, which is either an intimidation tactic or the strangest corporate branding decision I've ever seen. I break it open at my desk while Renn watches like it might explode.

Inside, a single card. A name, a room number, a time. Three hours from now.

**Director Ashworth, Collections Oversight. Vantage Tower, Floor 40.**

"That's not a summons for a case," Talia says, reading over my shoulder before I even ask her to. "That's a personal invitation."

"Is that better or worse than a summons?"

"Worse. A case summons means they're annoyed about paperwork. A personal invitation from Collections Oversight means someone decided you're worth a conversation." She hands the card back. "Ashworth doesn't do case reviews. He does people."

"What does that mean?"

"It means don't go alone."

I go alone, because the card specifies one attendee and Talia isn't listed as my broker of record on anything Vantage-related, not since my mother's original loan closed the day she died. Talia doesn't like it. She says so twice on the walk to the tower, and a third time in the lobby, before security waves me through to an elevator that only stops on floor forty when someone upstairs decides it should.

The office at the top doesn't look like a threat. That's the first surprise. No harsh lighting, no wall of monitors tracking collections in real time like I half expected. Just a calm room, soft chairs, a window looking out over the city, and a man behind the desk who stands up to shake my hand like we're old colleagues catching up.

"Sevric Arden," he says. "Director Ashworth. Thank you for coming."

"Wasn't much of an invitation to decline."

"Everything's declinable. You just have to be willing to live with the consequences." He gestures to the chair across from him, waits until I sit, then sits himself. "I run collections oversight for this region. Not enforcement directly, more the administrative side. I make sure the numbers balance."

"The numbers being years."

"The numbers being whatever the contract specifies. Sometimes money, sometimes years, sometimes both." He folds his hands on the desk, calm as a man discussing weather. "I wanted to meet you because your name has come up twice this month in contexts I don't usually see rookie brokers appear in."

"The Okafor trade and the two I won after."

"Precisely. You lost the first one in a way that wasn't your fault, if I'm honest, and won the next two in ways that were entirely your own work. That's a fast learning curve. Faster than most brokers manage in their first year, let alone their first month."

"Is that a compliment?"

"It's an observation. I don't hand out compliments, Mr. Arden. I hand out information." He leans back slightly. "I understand you've also been spending time in the archive room. Old contracts, old templates. Research, presumably, for future cases."

The room doesn't change temperature, but something in my chest goes cold anyway.

"I'm allowed to research past cases," I say carefully. "It's public floor archive."

"Of course it is. I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm simply noting that curiosity, in your position, tends to lead people toward conclusions that aren't always useful to draw." He says it lightly, almost kindly, which somehow makes it worse than if he'd threatened me outright. "Your mother's case, for instance. I imagine you've looked at that file more than once."

"You'd imagine right."

"Grief does that. Makes people search for reasons where sometimes there's only bad luck and bad timing." He studies me for a moment, unhurried. "You have a sister, don't you. Mira, I believe. Works at a design firm downtown, if my information is current."

The floor tilts slightly under me, though nothing in the room actually moves.

"Why do you know that."

"I make it my business to know the families of brokers who start attracting attention. It's not sinister, Mr. Arden. It's simply thorough." He smiles, small and pleasant, the kind of smile that never once reaches anywhere near his eyes. "I'd hate for a promising young broker to get so absorbed in old files that he stops paying attention to the people still in front of him. Families deserve attention too, don't they?"

I don't answer right away, mostly because my jaw has locked itself shut without asking permission.

"Is that a threat," I finally manage.

"It's a reminder. Threats are loud and clumsy. I find reminders travel further." He stands, signaling the meeting's end without raising his voice once. "Keep winning your cases, Mr. Arden. Genuinely, I mean that. Clean brokers are good for the floor's reputation. Just remember that curiosity has a cost like everything else here, and not every cost gets billed to you directly."

I stand too, legs steadier than I feel.

"Thank you for your time," I say, because some instinct tells me manners might matter more in this room than anywhere else on the trading floor.

"Of course." He shakes my hand again at the door, same warm grip as before. "Give my regards to Talia Hess. Tell her it's been a long time since we've spoken directly. She'll understand what that means."

The elevator ride down takes longer than it did going up, or maybe it just feels that way with my pulse going the speed it's going.

Talia's waiting in the lobby, arms crossed, reading my face before I say a single word.

"That bad."

"He knows about Mira. Her job, where she works, probably where she lives if I had to guess." I keep my voice low, though the lobby's mostly empty. "He mentioned the archive room too. And he wants me to tell you he sends his regards. Says it's been a long time since you two talked directly."

Talia goes very still, the same stillness from when I first showed her the pattern in the old contracts.

"Ashworth said that."

"Word for word."

She doesn't answer right away. We walk out of the tower in silence, back toward the Exchange, the city loud and normal around us in a way that feels almost insulting given what just happened forty floors up.

"He's telling you he can reach anyone close to you," Talia finally says. "Mira. Me. Anyone. That's the whole message, dressed up as a polite warning instead of a threat, because dressed up threats are harder to report and easier to deny."

"So what do I do?"

"You keep winning clean cases, because stopping now looks like guilt, and guilt invites more attention, not less." She stops walking, turning to face me fully. "But you also warn Mira. Not everything. Enough that she's careful without knowing why."

"She already found the collector's card. She's already asking questions."

"Then give her better instincts than curiosity. Tell her enough to make her cautious, not enough to make her a target for asking more."

I nod, though the idea of walking that line with my own sister feels harder than any contract argument I've built so far.

"And Talia. What did he mean, it's been a long time since you two talked directly?"

Her face closes over, quick and practiced, the same door she's shut on me twice before.

"It means Ashworth used to work under someone I knew a long time ago," she says. "Someone who still very much affects both our lives, whether we've earned the right to talk about him yet or not."

She starts walking again before I can push further, and I let her, because some doors, I'm learning, only open when the person holding them decides it's time.