Chapter 3 - The Shadow in the Ledger
The two eviction enforcement men backed away from Elena as if she had suddenly caught fire.
"Mr... Mr. Moretti," one of them stammered, pulling off his baseball cap and clutching it against his stomach. "We... we didn't know. The building owner just said the tenant was delinquent on rent. We were just doing a job, sir."
Dominic didn't even look at the man. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a clip of hundred-dollar bills, and tossed it into the chest of the speaker.
"That covers six months of rent," Dominic said smoothly. "Now take your truck, clear the street, and if I ever see your faces in this borough again, you'll be paying rent to the fish in the East River."
The men didn't wait for a second warning. They scrambled into the cab of their yellow tow truck, hit the ignition, and sped away down the alleyway so fast their tires screeched against the wet asphalt.
Dominic walked slowly up the stone steps, stopping two feet from where Elena sat holding her daughter on the cold concrete.
Elena looked up at him, her body trembling violently—not from the rain, but from pure, unadulterated terror. She knew who Dominic Moretti was. Everyone who worked in the accounting department at Moretti Holdings knew. He wasn't just the CEO; he was the untouchable Don of the city's most powerful crime syndicate.
"Mr. Moretti," Elena whispered, her voice barely audible over the patter of the rain against his umbrella. "Please... don't hurt my daughter. She doesn't know what she did. She's only five. I swear to you, she didn't mean to trespass on your property..."
Dominic looked down at her. Up close, despite the exhaustion and tears, her eyes were sharp, bright green, and entirely devoid of deceit.
"Get inside," Dominic said cleanly. "Before the kid catches pneumonia."
Five minutes later, Dominic stood in the tiny, cramped living room of Elena's second-floor apartment. The heat was barely working, whistling through an old radiator in the corner. The apartment was spotless, but terribly bare—a small sofa, a wooden kitchen table, a single drawing by Lily taped to the refrigerator.
Lily was in the small bedroom, wrapped in a blanket, eating a bowl of warm soup that one of Dominic's guards had brought up from a nearby deli.
Dominic stood by the window, his tall frame blocking out the view of the street below. He turned around to face Elena, who was standing by the kitchen counter, wringing a damp dishtowel between her hands.
"You're an auditor," Dominic stated, skipping any pleasantries. "A good one."
"I was," Elena corrected him softly, looking at the floor. "Until three days ago."
"Explain Project Anchor," Dominic commanded.
Elena's head snapped up, her green eyes flashing with sudden intensity. "I didn't steal anything, Mr. Moretti! I swear on my daughter's life! I didn't even know what Project Anchor was until Tuesday!"
"Then why did your system ID log into the file at midnight?"
"Because someone used my credentials!" Elena took a step forward, her fear momentarily eclipsed by professional indignation. "I was running a routine balance sweep on the corporate logistics accounts on Tuesday evening. I noticed a three-million-dollar anomaly routed through a shell company called Apex Global. The transfer was authorized using a high-level override code."
Dominic's eyes narrowed. "An override code?"
"Yes," Elena said, her breathing accelerating. "A code that belonged to Mr. Rossano's office. When I flagged the transaction to ask for clarification, my screen went black. Five minutes later, security officers came into my cubicle, confiscated my laptop, and handed me a termination letter signed by the board. They told me if I spoke to anyone about what I saw, I would be prosecuted for corporate espionage."
Dominic went completely still.
Paulie Rossano.
Paulie had been his father's right-hand man for twenty years. He was the manager of the family's books, the man who knew where every dollar was buried. But over the past six months, Dominic had noticed subtle discrepancies in the quarterly reports—discrepancies he had attributed to shifting market conditions.
He hadn't been losing money to market shifts. Paulie was skimming. And when a low-level auditor named Elena Vance accidentally pulled the string on his shell company, Paulie had framed her, ruined her life, and thrown her out onto the street to cover his tracks.
"You saw three million," Dominic said softly.
"No," Elena whispered, looking him straight in the eye. "I saw three million this week. But if you look at the sub-ledgers going back two years... someone has stolen over forty million dollars from your family, Mr. Moretti."
Dominic pulled out his silver pocket watch. He opened the hatch, watching the second hand sweep across the face.
The silence in the room became heavy, thick with the scent of an impending execution.
"Elena," Dominic said softly, closing the watch with a sharp click. "Pack your bags."
May you like
Elena paled. "What? Why?"
"Because Paulie Rossano knows you saw those files," Dominic said, his dark eyes glowing with a lethal promise. "And now that he knows you're still in the city, he won't just stop at firing you."
