I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.
Inside was almost completely dark, so I pulled out my phone and switched on the flashlight. The beam cut through the black interior and illuminated five folders stacked neatly inside.
"Hmm."
I reached in and took them all out, setting them on top of the safe one by one. Then I opened the first folder and started reading.
And that was when it all started to make sense.
The first folder contained property records. Not just one, but several. The pawnshop, a small storage unit downtown, a laundromat, and a small apartment block all connected to the same chain of transfers. On paper, the names looked different, but the purchase dates were too close together and the signatures had the same shape. The businesses had all been taken under a shell company that existed only on paper and seemed to have been bought up through fake loans and pressure tactics.
Brok had not just bought a pawnshop.
He had been swallowing the block piece by piece.
