Chapter 5 - The outside investigators arrived the following morning.
Enzo disliked them immediately.
Elena considered that encouraging.
“If you liked the people investigating your company for fraud, I would be worried,” she told him.
They stood inside a conference room at Moretti Holdings while three specialists unpacked laptops, evidence bags and encrypted drives.
The lead investigator was Rebecca Sloan, a former federal financial-crimes attorney with silver-streaked dark hair and the unnerving habit of looking at people for several seconds after they stopped talking.
She shook Elena’s hand first.
“Mrs. Moretti.”
“Elena.”
Rebecca nodded.
Then she faced Enzo.
“Mr. Moretti.”
“Enzo.”
Rebecca did not reciprocate.
“Mr. Moretti is fine.”
Elena turned away to hide a smile.
Enzo noticed.
He waited until Rebecca walked across the room.
“You enjoyed that.”
“Immensely.”
“She’s irritating.”
“You’ve known her forty seconds.”
“Enough.”
Rebecca returned.
“I need complete access to financial systems, building security records, executive schedules and internal communications.”
Enzo said, “No.”
Elena closed her eyes.
Rebecca did not react.
“Then hire someone else.”
Enzo stared at her.
“You do not receive unrestricted access to private correspondence.”
“I do if you want an independent investigation.”
“There are matters unrelated to Bellandi Freight.”
“I’m capable of recognizing relevance.”
“So am I.”
Rebecca looked toward Elena.
“Does he negotiate everything?”
“Yes.”
Enzo looked offended.
Rebecca continued, “Then let’s save time. I do not work for you. I do not care about your reputation, your hierarchy or whether information embarrasses you. My responsibility is determining who moved eight point four million dollars and who fabricated evidence against Elena. If access is restricted, my report will say so.”
Silence.
Elena waited.
Enzo looked at her.
She lifted one eyebrow.
He sighed.
“Full access. Privileged legal material excluded unless separately approved.”
Rebecca nodded.
“Reasonable.”
Elena whispered, “Look at that.”
“Do not.”
“What?”
“You’re learning compromise with strangers now.”
“I regret marrying you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No.”
The admission came automatically.
Rebecca glanced between them.
“Are you finished?”
Enzo’s expression suggested murder.
Elena smiled.
“Yes.”
The first breakthrough came four hours later.
The digital approvals bearing Elena’s credentials had not originated from Elena’s workstation.
They had originated from a mirrored virtual environment built inside the company network.
Someone had created a copy of her user profile.
The access point belonged to a maintenance server most employees did not know existed.
Rebecca’s cyber specialist identified three administrators capable of reaching it.
One was head of IT.
One was a contracted systems engineer.
The third was Dominic.
Elena read the report twice.
“No.”
Rebecca sat across from her.
“That reaction is exactly why you shouldn’t investigate this yourself.”
“Dominic has been with the family for almost thirty years.”
“That is a fact.”
“He practically raised Enzo after his father died.”
“Also a fact.”
“He would never—”
Rebecca interrupted gently.
“That is an opinion.”
Elena hated her slightly for using Elena’s own logic against her.
Enzo took the news worse.
“No.”
Rebecca remained calm.
“We are not accusing him.”
“You put him on a suspect list.”
“We put three people with access on a list.”
“Remove him.”
“No.”
Enzo rose from his chair.
Elena stood immediately.
“Enzo.”
He looked at her.
She saw something deeper than anger.
Fear.
Dominic was not merely an employee.
Dominic represented continuity.
A man who had known Enzo before power hardened around him.
The possibility of betrayal touched something old.
“You told me the investigation follows evidence,” Elena said.
“Dominic is not evidence.”
“His access is.”
“He would not do this.”
“Then the investigation will prove that.”
Enzo turned away.
Rebecca watched silently.
After a long moment, he said, “You may examine his system access.”
Rebecca nodded.
“But you do not confront him without me.”
“That depends on what we find.”
His head turned sharply.
“Elena.”
She touched his arm.
“Walk with me.”
He resisted for one second.
Then followed her into the hallway.
When the door closed, Elena lowered her voice.
“You trusted me when the evidence pointed at me.”
“That was different.”
“Why?”
“Because I know you.”
“You know Dominic.”
“Exactly.”
She waited.
His jaw tightened.
Then he understood her point.
Elena continued.
“You cannot ask the world to investigate me objectively and then demand special rules when the same process reaches someone you love.”
“He’s family.”
“So am I.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Elena almost smiled, but the situation was too serious.
“Fear can warn you something matters,” she said.
Recognition moved through his face.
Their wedding night.
The garden.
The conversation about Monaco.
“But it doesn’t tell you what’s true,” he finished.
“Exactly.”
He hated it.
She could tell.
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“I still want to be present.”
“That’s reasonable.”
He looked suspicious.
“You agreed too quickly.”
“Enjoy it.”
The investigators interviewed Dominic that afternoon.
He appeared more offended than frightened.
“You think I stole from Bellandi?”
Rebecca said, “I think you had access.”
“So did twelve people before the server permissions were changed.”
The cyber specialist looked up.
“Twelve?”
Dominic frowned.
“Yes.”
“Our records show three.”
“Current records.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Explain.”
Dominic looked toward Enzo.
“Your father required emergency administrator credentials for the old logistics network. After he died, I ordered them shut down.”
“When?” Enzo asked.
“Eleven years ago.”
“Were they?”
“I believed so.”
The room became very quiet.
Rebecca asked, “Do any records exist?”
Dominic nodded.
“Paper.”
Enzo stared at him.
“You kept paper copies?”
“Your father did.”
“Where?”
Dominic looked almost embarrassed.
“Archive room beneath the Brooklyn warehouse.”
Marco groaned.
“The room with forty years of boxes?”
“Yes.”
Elena stood.
“Let’s go.”
Enzo immediately said, “No.”
Everyone looked at him.
He closed his eyes.
“Fine.”
Marco smiled.
Enzo pointed at him.
“Nothing.”
“I said nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“I was breathing.”
“Do it more quietly.”
The Brooklyn warehouse smelled of dust, machine oil and cold concrete.
The archive room was worse.
Metal shelves stretched beneath fluorescent lights. Boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling, many labeled in handwriting from decades earlier.
Elena stared.
“This is your record system?”
Enzo looked personally insulted.
“My current records are digitized.”
“Your father’s apparently survived the Renaissance.”
Dominic began searching shelves.
Two hours passed.
Then three.
Elena found tax records from 1998, shipping permits from 2002, old employee rosters and one photograph of twenty-six-year-old Enzo standing beside Marco at a dock.
She held it up.
“Oh, this is excellent.”
Enzo turned.
His face changed.
“Put that down.”
“You had a leather jacket.”
“It was cold.”
“You were posing.”
“I was not.”
Marco appeared behind her.
“He practiced that expression.”
Enzo looked murderous.
Dominic laughed from across the room.
For a moment he seemed exactly what Elena had always believed him to be.
Family.
Then Rebecca found the ledger.
It was not labeled as security documentation.
It sat inside a box marked INSURANCE—2009.
The ledger listed emergency access credentials.
Most had lines drawn through them.
One did not.
Account: M-17.
Assigned user: Carlo Moretti.
Enzo’s father.
Status: ACTIVE.
Dominic stared at the page.
“That is impossible.”
Rebecca looked up.
“When did Carlo Moretti die?”
“Eleven years ago.”
“And the account remained active?”
“It shouldn’t have.”
The cyber specialist began typing.
After several minutes his expression changed.
“M-17 accessed the maintenance server.”
“When?” Elena asked.
“Multiple times.”
He scrolled.
“First recorded access fourteen months ago.”
Exactly when Northline Strategic Services had been created.
Enzo stood motionless.
“Can you locate where the login originated?”
“Some sessions were masked.”
“Some?”
“One wasn’t.”
The specialist turned the screen.
A network address appeared.
Marco recognized it first.
His face hardened.
“That belongs to the old waterfront office.”
Elena looked at Enzo.
“What waterfront office?”
He did not answer immediately.
Dominic did.
“Your father kept a private office near Red Hook.”
“Does it still belong to the company?”
“No,” Enzo said.
“Who owns it?”
A pause.
Then Enzo answered.
“My uncle.”
Elena stared at him.
“You have an uncle?”
Marco suddenly found the wall interesting.
Enzo looked displeased.
“Yes.”
“You have never mentioned an uncle.”
“There was no reason.”
“Apparently there was an eight-point-four-million-dollar reason.”
His expression tightened.
Dominic closed the ledger.
“Lorenzo Moretti.”
Elena recognized the name only vaguely.
Enzo’s father had had a younger brother.
She had assumed he was dead.
“Where is he?”
“Outside the family,” Enzo said.
“That is not a location.”
“He left New York fifteen years ago.”
“Why?”
Enzo’s eyes became distant.
“My father accused him of stealing.”
Elena looked at the forged signatures again.
History repeating itself.
A man accused of stealing.
A family divided by evidence.
An old account belonging to a dead father.
Rebecca asked the question Elena was already thinking.
“Was Lorenzo guilty?”
Enzo’s answer took too long.
“I believed he was.”
“Evidence?”
“My father had records.”
“What kind?”
“Transfers. Documents. Signatures.”
Elena’s blood chilled.
She looked at Enzo.
He looked back.
They understood simultaneously.
The exact method now being used against Elena had once been used against Lorenzo.
Either somebody had copied an old family scandal.
Or the old family scandal itself had been a lie.
Dominic whispered, “Carlo.”
Enzo turned.
“What?”
Dominic’s face had lost color.
“There was something I never told you.”
The room went still.
Enzo’s voice lowered.
“What did you never tell me?”
Dominic looked older suddenly.
“When your father accused Lorenzo, Lorenzo came to me.”
“And?”
“He said the signatures were forged.”
Enzo stared.
“You believed him?”
“I didn’t know.”
“But you never told me.”
“You were twenty-five. Your father was alive. Lorenzo had already been pushed out.”
“You never told me.”
Dominic’s silence was answer enough.
Anger entered Enzo slowly.
Not explosive.
Worse.
“Eleven years,” he said.
“Elena,” Marco warned quietly.
She moved beside Enzo anyway.
Dominic said, “I made a mistake.”
Enzo laughed once without humor.
“A mistake?”
“I thought I was protecting the family.”
“By hiding the possibility that my father framed his own brother?”
“I had no proof.”
“You had doubt.”
“Yes.”
“And you decided I did not need to know.”
Dominic flinched.
Elena felt the terrible irony.
A man deciding what someone else should know in the name of protection.
Exactly the habit Enzo had fought to unlearn.
Enzo saw it too.
That almost made him angrier.
Rebecca closed her laptop.
“We need Lorenzo Moretti.”
Marco said, “Finding him may not be easy.”
Dominic looked toward the old ledger.
“He came back.”
Everyone turned.
“How do you know?” Enzo asked.
Dominic swallowed.
“Because three weeks before your wedding, he called me.”
Silence.
Elena looked at her husband.
Enzo’s face became unreadable.
“What did he want?”
May you like
Dominic answered softly.
“To warn me that Carlo’s sins were not finished with us.”
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