Chapter 6 - The Man Behind the Smile
Paul didn’t answer his phone.
Bellori’s assistant manager said he’d called in sick.
Rachel contacted the detective again, this time about the invoice and recording.
I wanted to drive straight to Paul’s house.
She looked me in the eye.
“You want answers.
He may want time to destroy them.”
“So we do nothing?”
“We give the people who can get warrants a reason to act.”
Mateo asked me to meet his father that afternoon.
I agreed only if Rachel came.
Salvatore received us in a library with no visible guards and a cold cup of tea beside him.
Carlo wasn’t there.
“I suspended his access to company accounts,” Mateo said.
“He says you’re exploiting my father’s age.”
“Does he?”
“I told him to explain the payments.”
Salvatore handed Rachel a folder.
An old trust agreement.
Annual summaries.
Letters stating that Rosalia’s family had received regular distributions.
Every page looked clean.
Every signature looked official.
My mother had died paying overdue rent.
I hated those neat pages more than the wreckage in my apartment.
“Your brother supervised the fund first,” Rachel said.
“Enzo,” Salvatore answered.
“After he died in 2011, Carlo took over.”
“Did you ever call my great-grandmother?” I asked.
He lowered his eyes.
“She wouldn’t speak to me.”
“Why?”
“Because I failed her.”
“That sounds rehearsed.”
He flinched.
I had spent years apologizing before asking for anything: a schedule change, an extension, a chair after twelve hours on my feet.
Now a man with more money than I could imagine wanted the comfort of a softer question.
I didn’t give it to him.
“Did she know the fund existed?”
“Yes.
She refused to meet me, but she accepted that the money belonged to her family.”
“Then somebody made her think you broke another promise.”
He lowered his head.
Mateo glanced at me, then at his father.
“Tell her what happened.”
Before Salvatore answered, Nadia entered with a tablet.
“We recovered the hallway footage.”
Paul appeared outside my locker.
He opened it with a key, slipped an envelope into my tote, and closed the door.
The timestamp was twenty minutes before dinner.
Before I’d spoken Sicilian.
Before Salvatore had heard my name.
“They already knew,” I said.
Nadia nodded.
Then she played an earlier clip.
Carlo stood beside Paul near the loading dock.
He handed him the envelope.
Something cold settled beneath my ribs.
May you like
The note hadn’t been punishment for what I’d said.
It had been waiting for me all along.
