Chapter 3 - THE ADDRESS ON EVERY INVOICE
For a moment, I couldn't breathe.
“My mother's restaurant has never done business with any of these companies,” I said.
Luca watched my face carefully.
“Are you certain?”
“Absolutely. She has owned the place for twenty-six years. She keeps every invoice in labeled boxes. If she'd received payments from companies like these, I would know.”
Daniel turned his laptop toward me.
“Your mother's restaurant is listed as a correspondence address for three vendors that have received payments from Moretti Hospitality.”
I stared at the screen.
The address was correct down to the apartment number above the restaurant, where my father and I had lived when I was a child.
But the registered business names meant nothing to me.
“Could someone have used the address without permission?” I asked.
“Certainly,” Daniel replied. “The question is why.”
Luca folded his arms.
“Tell me about your family.”
I stiffened.
“Why?”
“Because someone has connected your mother's restaurant to my company's accounts. I need to know whether that connection is legitimate.”
I didn't like the direction of the conversation.
“My mother has never met you. She runs a small restaurant. My father is recovering from a stroke. Neither of them has anything to do with your business.”
“I didn't say they did.”
“But you're asking questions as if they might.”
Luca held my gaze.
“I'm asking because I would rather discover the truth before someone uses your family to hurt you.”
That answer unsettled me more than an accusation would have.
I told him what I knew. My mother, Teresa Reed, had opened Bell Street Kitchen with a small loan and a secondhand stove. My father had worked there until his stroke three years earlier. I'd left college to help pay his medical bills, then taken the housekeeping job at Luca's mansion because it offered steady wages and health coverage.
We were ordinary people.
We had never borrowed money from a crime family. We had never invested in a mysterious business. We had never signed documents authorizing anyone to use our address.
Daniel listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he said, “We need to verify the registrations and trace the payments. We won't assume your family is involved simply because an address appears on paper.”
Luca nodded.
“Start with the company that issued last night's invoice.”
Daniel made a call.
Within an hour, he learned that Bellini Hospitality Consulting had received payments from two Moretti restaurants over the previous seven months. The amounts were small enough to escape immediate attention when compared with the company's overall revenue, but together they exceeded two hundred thousand dollars.
A second vendor had received nearly three hundred thousand.
A third had received more than four hundred thousand.
All three companies had been registered within a year of one another.
All three listed the same accountant.
And all three used my mother's restaurant as their mailing address.
“That can't be a coincidence,” Marco muttered.
“No,” Daniel said. “It isn't.”
Luca's expression remained unreadable.
“Who approved the payments?”
“That's the next problem.” Daniel rotated his laptop. “The approvals appear to have come through the events and hospitality division. The authorization records point to an executive account with access to your internal system.”
“Whose account?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Vanessa's.”
The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the air-conditioning humming above us.
Luca walked to the window.
He remained there for several seconds, looking down at the Chicago street.
“Freeze every pending payment to those vendors,” he said. “Preserve the records. Nobody contacts Vanessa or Adrian until we understand what we're dealing with.”
Marco nodded.
Daniel began typing.
I stood beside the desk, feeling increasingly certain that I'd stepped into a situation far beyond a disputed dinner bill.
“Mr. Moretti,” I said, “I need to tell my mother.”
Luca turned.
“Not yet.”
“She deserves to know someone is using her address.”
“I agree. But if the people behind this realize we've discovered it, they may try to destroy evidence or approach your family before we understand why they're involved.”
“Then what am I supposed to do? Pretend everything is normal?”
“No. You're supposed to let us establish the facts before anyone frightens your parents with an incomplete story.”
His voice wasn't unkind, but it left little room for argument.
I hated that he was right.
Before noon, Daniel discovered something else.
One of the shell companies had paid a consulting fee to a private security firm that had previously provided services at Moretti properties.
Another payment had gone to an account associated with a former employee who'd been dismissed for attempting to sell customer information.
The investigation was expanding.
And Vanessa's name appeared repeatedly.
At two that afternoon, Marco came into the office carrying a printout.
“There's another problem.”
Luca looked up.
“What now?”
“The company records show that one of the vendors was registered using an identity document belonging to a woman named Elena Reed.”
My heart stopped.
“My mother?”
Daniel checked the details.
“No. Different first name. Same surname, same street address.”
“Could it be a mistake?” I asked.
“Possibly,” he said. “But the registration includes a signature.”
He enlarged the scanned document.
The signature wasn't my mother's.
It wasn't mine.
But beneath the name, someone had entered a date of birth that made my stomach turn.
It was my father's.
I grabbed the edge of the desk.
“My father has never registered a company. He can barely hold a pen since his stroke.”
Luca's expression darkened.
“Daniel, find out who submitted this document.”
Daniel nodded.
Then his phone rang.
He listened for several seconds before slowly lowering it.
“What is it?” Luca asked.
“The bank has flagged a withdrawal from one of the accounts connected to the shell companies.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
Luca stood.
“Where did the money go?”
Daniel looked at me before answering.
“The transfer was authorized using credentials belonging to your father's former rehabilitation provider.”
My mouth went dry.
The clinic that had treated my father had closed six months earlier after its director abruptly resigned.
I had assumed it was a routine business failure.
Now I wondered whether the closure had been part of something else.
Luca reached for his phone.
“Get me the clinic's former director.”
Daniel was already searching.
Then he stopped.
“I found him.”
“Where?”
Daniel turned the screen toward us.
A photograph showed a man in a dark coat standing outside a private airport terminal.
Beside him stood Vanessa Bellini.
May you like
The timestamp was from three days earlier.
And the man holding the envelope in the photograph was my father.
