Shadow Ledger: A Zoe Blaise Mystery Prequel
Before every mystery, there was one mistake.
Long before Zoe Blaise uncovered the conspiracies threatening the global beauty industry, there was Giovanni Jones.
Brilliant, principled and deeply committed to justice, Giovanni is a forensic accountant seconded from the Bank of Italy whose unusual ability to read the intentions hidden within numbers has drawn him into the world of intelligence. When a series of seemingly legitimate financial transactions reveals an unexpected pattern, he finds himself at the centre of an investigation stretching across pharmaceutical companies, cosmetics manufacturers, financial institutions and political influence.
Every transaction appears legal. Every company appears respectable.
Together, they reveal something far more dangerous.
Giovanni believes in institutions. He believes in procedure. And above all, he believes that acting responsibly means waiting until the evidence justifies action.
It is the greatest mistake of his life.
An undercover operation is exposed. Lives are lost. A trusted colleague barely survives. Faced with an impossible moral choice, Giovanni sacrifices the truth to protect those who remain in danger—a decision that allows the conspiracy to survive and changes him forever.
Unable to place the same faith in the institutions that failed him, Giovanni quietly establishes Orpheus Consulting: a small, independent investigative practice founded on a simple principle—that someone must follow power wherever it hides.
Then a young forensic accountant named Zoe Blaise walks through his door.
In her, Giovanni recognises something familiar: an unwillingness to guess when the evidence can still be followed.
The future of Orpheus has begun.
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