The Black Ledger
When a junior accountant uncovers a hidden ledger buried inside a multinational corporation's records, he realizes the company's reach extends far beyond business — into the darkest corners of power.
Ethan Cole didn’t consider himself important.
A junior accountant at Wexler Industries, he spent his days filing expenses and adjusting columns on spreadsheets that no one read twice.
Until he stumbled onto the Black Ledger.
It was hidden deep within the archives, tucked between folders labeled innocuous things like "Consulting Fees" and "Asset Management." But the Black Ledger was different.
It wasn’t just numbers.
It was names.
Dates.
Transactions written in coded shorthand Ethan didn’t fully understand — until he started piecing them together.
Bribes to senators.
"Contributions" to scientific organizations.
Payments to obscure groups with initials Ethan had never heard of.
The more he read, the colder he felt.
Wexler Industries wasn’t just a company. It was an empire — manipulating policies, rewriting laws, funding experiments that skirted ethical lines so fine they were invisible.
That night, Ethan copied everything onto a flash drive.
He thought about going to the authorities.
He thought about posting it online.
But by the time he got home, the black sedan was already waiting across the street.
The next morning, his apartment was exactly as he’d left it — except for his laptop, his flash drive, and the faint scent of cigarette smoke lingering in the air.
Ethan didn’t go to work that day. Or the next. He tried reaching out to journalists, but somehow, every call was intercepted, every email undelivered.
Days passed. Then weeks.
One evening, in a coffee shop two towns over, a woman he didn’t know slid into the booth across from him.
She placed a thin envelope on the table.
Inside was a single photo:
Him, sitting at his desk at Wexler Industries — only in the photo, he wasn't alone.
Standing behind him was a man Ethan had never seen before.
A man whose face didn’t quite... fit.
As if it had been stitched together from fragments of different people.
The woman spoke softly:
"You were never supposed to see it. Now you’re part of it."
She stood, leaving Ethan alone with the photo and a growing knot of dread in his stomach.
Somewhere, deep within Wexler’s cold steel towers, the Black Ledger still existed.
Still growing.
Still pulling the strings.
And Ethan Cole had become just another entry.
A junior accountant at Wexler Industries, he spent his days filing expenses and adjusting columns on spreadsheets that no one read twice.
Until he stumbled onto the Black Ledger.
It was hidden deep within the archives, tucked between folders labeled innocuous things like "Consulting Fees" and "Asset Management." But the Black Ledger was different.
It wasn’t just numbers.
It was names.
Dates.
Transactions written in coded shorthand Ethan didn’t fully understand — until he started piecing them together.
Bribes to senators.
"Contributions" to scientific organizations.
Payments to obscure groups with initials Ethan had never heard of.
The more he read, the colder he felt.
Wexler Industries wasn’t just a company. It was an empire — manipulating policies, rewriting laws, funding experiments that skirted ethical lines so fine they were invisible.
That night, Ethan copied everything onto a flash drive.
He thought about going to the authorities.
He thought about posting it online.
But by the time he got home, the black sedan was already waiting across the street.
The next morning, his apartment was exactly as he’d left it — except for his laptop, his flash drive, and the faint scent of cigarette smoke lingering in the air.
Ethan didn’t go to work that day. Or the next. He tried reaching out to journalists, but somehow, every call was intercepted, every email undelivered.
Days passed. Then weeks.
One evening, in a coffee shop two towns over, a woman he didn’t know slid into the booth across from him.
She placed a thin envelope on the table.
Inside was a single photo:
Him, sitting at his desk at Wexler Industries — only in the photo, he wasn't alone.
Standing behind him was a man Ethan had never seen before.
A man whose face didn’t quite... fit.
As if it had been stitched together from fragments of different people.
The woman spoke softly:
"You were never supposed to see it. Now you’re part of it."
She stood, leaving Ethan alone with the photo and a growing knot of dread in his stomach.
Somewhere, deep within Wexler’s cold steel towers, the Black Ledger still existed.
Still growing.
Still pulling the strings.
And Ethan Cole had become just another entry.
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