Chapter 2 - The Transaction That Shouldn't Exist
Bella stayed inside the restroom stall until the door closed behind the women.
She counted to 30.
Not because she needed 30 seconds.
Because counting stopped her from crying.
When she returned to her desk, a new suspicious-transaction report waited in her queue.
Vendor: North Meridian Logistics.
Amount: $4,920,000.
Bella stared at the number.
49,200.
4,920,000.
The similarity was probably meaningless.
She opened the supporting documents.
North Meridian supposedly leased warehouse space near the Calumet River. Yet its registered address belonged to a vacant storefront. Its invoices had been approved by 3 different departments, but every digital authorization had occurred within 90 seconds of one another.
Bella pulled the incorporation records.
The company had existed for 25 years.
Her fingers stopped.
25 years.
Lucas had told her he had counted exits every morning for 25 years.
Coincidence, she told herself.
Then she found something worse.
The oldest scanned document contained a name.
Mikhail Kavalchuk.
Bella forgot to breathe.
Kavalchuk was not an extraordinarily rare Ukrainian surname, but it was rare enough in Chicago to make her sit straighter.
She searched internal records.
Access denied.
She tried a second database.
Access denied.
A shadow fell across her desk.
Rianna Vaspuchcci stood behind her.
"What are you working on?"
Bella minimized the window.
"Routine vendor review."
"Which vendor?"
"North Meridian."
Rianna's smile vanished for perhaps half a second.
That was enough.
"Close it."
Bella looked up.
"Excuse me?"
"That file was assigned incorrectly."
"It appeared in my compliance queue."
"Software makes mistakes."
"The system shows it was manually assigned."
Rianna leaned closer.
"You're new, Miss Kavalchuk. One useful lesson in corporate life is learning which mistakes deserve correction and which deserve silence."
Bella felt every instinct sharpen.
"I'll ask my supervisor."
"No."
The word came too quickly.
Bella's eyes met hers.
Rianna smiled again.
"Mr. Dracott requested you upstairs."
"Why?"
"You can ask him."
Lucas's office occupied the building's top floor.
Bella had spent 8 weeks convincing herself the penthouse had been an isolated catastrophe.
Now the elevator doors opened, and there he stood beside the windows.
No whiskey.
No loosened shirt.
No visible weakness.
He wore a charcoal suit and looked colder sober.
"Sit."
Bella remained standing.
"Did you arrange my job?"
Lucas did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
"You said you wouldn't remember my name."
"I lied."
Her jaw tightened.
"Why?"
"Because 2 days after you left the Thornberry, I had someone verify your story."
Humiliation burned through her.
"You investigated me?"
"I investigate everyone."
"You paid me, investigated me, then put me inside your company?"
"You applied here 7 months before we met."
Bella froze.
Lucas slid a folder across his desk.
Her original application was inside.
Rejected.
Then another.
Rejected.
And another.
4 applications.
All submitted before the Thornberry.
Lucas's expression remained unreadable.
"You were rejected by an automated screening system because your employment gap and janitorial work lowered your candidate score."
"So you changed it."
"I ordered a human being to read your résumé."
"That's still interference."
"Yes."
At least he did not insult her by denying it.
Bella placed the folder down.
"I don't want charity."
"Good. I don't give it."
"You gave me $49,200."
"No. We made a terrible agreement while both of us were in terrible circumstances. I haven't mistaken it for generosity."
The bluntness disarmed her.
Then Lucas noticed the report still open on the tablet she carried.
His face changed.
"Who assigned you North Meridian?"
"I don't know."
"Who saw you reviewing it?"
"Rianna."
Lucas reached for his phone.
Bella caught something in his expression.
Not anger.
Fear.
"Lucas."
It was the first time she had used his name since that night.
He stopped.
"What is North Meridian?"
"Nothing you need to concern yourself with."
"I found Mikhail Kavalchuk."
Silence swallowed the room.
Lucas slowly lowered the phone.
"Where?"
"An incorporation document from 25 years ago."
He crossed the room and took the tablet.
When he saw the name, color drained from his face.
Bella had seen Lucas drunk, cruel, exhausted and cold.
She had never seen him frightened.
"Who is he?" she asked.
Lucas locked the tablet.
"You are leaving."
"What?"
"Not the building. Chicago."
Bella laughed once in disbelief.
"No."
"I'll arrange transportation."
"No."
"This isn't a negotiation."
"My entire life is here."
"Then temporarily acquire another one."
Bella stepped toward him.
"You don't get to control me because we spent one night together."
"This has nothing to do with that night."
"Then explain it."
Lucas looked toward the windows.
"North Meridian existed before I inherited anything. I spent 15 years trying to identify who actually controls it."
"And?"
"The people behind it killed my family."
Bella went still.
The fire.
25 years.
Lucas continued.
"My father discovered money disappearing through shell companies. North Meridian was one. He planned to expose the network."
"The fire wasn't an accident."
"No."
"And Mikhail Kavalchuk?"
"I've never heard that name."
Bella searched his face for deception.
She found none she could prove.
Her phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
Bella standing at Helena's grave.
The picture had been taken from behind the cemetery fence.
Below it were 7 words.
YOUR MOTHER SHOULD HAVE KEPT THE SECRET.
Bella's fingers went numb.
Lucas took the phone.
Whatever remained gentle in his expression disappeared.
"Who knew about the funeral?"
"Everyone at the hotel knew my mother died."
"That's not what I asked."
"Pastor Burkhart. Mrs. Melnik. The funeral home."
Lucas enlarged the photograph.
Then he stopped.
In the background stood the unknown man in the long coat.
"Do you know him?"
"No."
Lucas did.
Bella saw it immediately.
"Who is he?"
Lucas stared at the image.
"Adrian Vale."
"Who?"
"My father's accountant."
Bella frowned.
"You said your family died 25 years ago."
"They did."
"And his accountant?"
Lucas looked at her.
"Adrian Vale died in the same fire."
Neither spoke.
Then Bella remembered Pastor Burkhart beside the grave.
Your mother left something with me.
Something she had given him many years ago.
Something he had been instructed to protect until Bella was strong enough.
She grabbed her handbag.
Lucas blocked the door.
"Where are you going?"
"St. Nicholas."
"Why?"
"My mother left something there."
"When?"
"Twenty-five years ago."
For the first time since Bella had met him, Lucas Dracott looked completely unprepared for what came next.
"Twenty-five?"
Bella nodded.
Lucas reached for his coat.
"We're going together."
"No."
"Someone photographed you burying your mother and sent you a threat connected to a company that helped murder my family."
His voice dropped.
"You are not walking into that church alone."
They reached St. Nicholas 22 minutes later.
The front door stood open.
Bella ran inside.
"Father Elias?"
No answer.
They found the pastor's office empty.
Both baptism ledgers lay on the floor.
The desk drawer had been forced open.
The yellow envelope was gone.
On the wooden desk someone had left a single photograph.
Lucas picked it up.
It showed 2 women standing outside a Chicago hospital 27 years earlier.
One was Helena Kavalchuk.
The other woman held a newborn.
On the back, written in faded ink, were 4 words.
Oxana Dracott. October 1999.
Bella read it twice.
Then looked at Lucas.
"What does that mean?"
Lucas did not answer.
Because beneath the handwriting was a symbol he had not seen since childhood.
May you like
His father's private seal.
And suddenly the one reckless night they had both tried to forget no longer looked accidental at all.
