Chapter 9 - Someone Inside DeLuca House Was Lying
The photograph of my father destroyed every certainty I had left.
I held it beneath the kitchen lights in Lily's temporary apartment while Roman examined the back.
No writing.
No date.
But the image itself contained clues.
Dad stood beside a bus terminal.
An electronic advertisement behind him displayed a movie release date.
Two days after his reported death.
“He looks sick,” Lily whispered.
She was right.
Dad's face was pale.
His shoulders hunched.
But it was him.
No question.
Same brown jacket.
Same small scar near his eyebrow.
My hands shook.
“We buried him.”
Lily's voice cracked.
“We had a funeral.”
I remembered the closed casket.
Dr. Keene had recommended it.
He said complications during emergency treatment had made viewing difficult.
I had been too destroyed to argue.
Roman looked at me.
“You never saw the body?”
“No.”
The answer sounded impossible now.
Marco entered.
“We verified the photo.”
“How?”
“Metadata is gone, but the bus advertisement confirms the window. It couldn't have been taken before the date on the poster.”
Lily sank into a chair.
“So Dad lived.”
“For at least two days,” Roman said.
“Then where did he go?”
Nobody knew.
The package delivery created another question.
How had someone entered Lily's protected apartment?
The DeLuca security team checked every door.
Window.
Camera.
No intrusion.
Then one guard admitted something.
A woman from housekeeping had entered while Lily was at the mansion.
There was no scheduled housekeeping.
The woman wore the building's uniform and knew the access code.
Who provided it?
Only three people.
Building management.
Marco.
Roman.
And Adrian.
Again Adrian.
Roman called him.
No answer.
Marco tried.
Nothing.
His phone was off.
Roman's jaw tightened.
“Find him.”
I hated how quickly suspicion returned.
“Maybe there's an explanation.”
“There was an explanation the first time.”
“You believed it.”
“I believed evidence.”
“Then wait for evidence now.”
Roman looked at me.
“You're defending him?”
“I'm defending the idea that not everyone is guilty because their name appears in the wrong place.”
Something softened in his face.
“You're right.”
It surprised me.
Powerful men often treated changing their mind as weakness.
Roman didn't.
“Find him,” he told Marco. “But quietly.”
Adrian arrived voluntarily thirty minutes later.
His phone had died.
The housekeeping access?
He had approved a new service company six months earlier.
The current contract still carried his digital authorization.
Someone cloned an old employee badge.
Again, he appeared guilty.
Again, there was another explanation.
But this time Adrian looked angry.
“Somebody is using me.”
Marco nodded.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
I thought about Vivian.
Howard.
Daniel.
Then another name came to me.
“Evelyn.”
Everyone looked at me.
Evelyn Shaw had been Howard's comptroller.
She knew financial systems.
Corporate access.
Old contracts.
Maybe she wasn't simply a frightened witness.
Maybe she was still working for Howard.
Roman frowned.
“She warned us.”
“Or led us.”
The recording directed us to Saint Michael's.
Which led us to the archive.
Exactly what Howard wanted.
If he couldn't find it, he could let us retrieve it for him.
Roman immediately ordered the storage facility checked.
Too late.
Locker 417 had been emptied.
Every box.
Every drive.
Gone.
I felt physically ill.
“We brought the evidence out?”
Marco shook his head.
“No. We copied some.”
“Some?”
“Not all.”
Roman looked furious.
The most damaging originals were gone.
Someone had followed us.
Waited.
Then entered after we left.
The facility camera footage had been erased.
Professional.
I thought about Evelyn's recording again.
“Daniel found me.”
Maybe she wanted us to think she was hunted.
“What if Daniel isn't chasing Evelyn?” I asked.
“What if they're working together?”
Marco considered it.
Possible.
Then Adrian opened his laptop.
“If they're looking for something, they'll need to know what James copied.”
He searched old DeLuca server archives.
Most files from eight years earlier had been migrated.
One directory remained.
Bennett Systems Access Review.
Inside were security reports Dad submitted before his death.
Routine entries.
Door malfunctions.
Elevator logs.
Then Adrian found one encrypted file.
Password protected.
Filename:
MARY.
My mother's name.
I tried her birthday.
Nothing.
Wedding anniversary.
Nothing.
Lily's birthday.
Nothing.
My birthday.
The file opened.
Dad.
Of course.
Inside was a scan of a handwritten note:
If they take the archive, they still won't have the key. The evidence means nothing without matching transfer codes. Claire has the key and doesn't know it.
My heart stopped.
“How?”
Roman read over my shoulder.
There was another line.
C.B. 0714-2319.
Claire Bennett.
The numbers meant nothing.
Until Lily spoke.
“That's your old library card.”
I turned.
“What?”
“When we were kids. You used that number for everything.”
She remembered because I had once made her memorize it.
I stared at the sequence.
Dad used my childhood library card as an encryption key.
We entered it into the second file.
A massive spreadsheet opened.
Thousands of transfers.
Dates.
Companies.
Medical accounts.
Mercer.
Northstar.
And one recurring destination account.
DVA Holdings.
Roman went still.
“What?”
“DVA.”
“What is it?”
He looked at Adrian.
Adrian had gone pale.
DVA wasn't Mercer.
It wasn't Bennett.
It belonged to someone else.
DVA Holdings had been established by Roman's father.
Dominic Vittorio Alessandro.
A DeLuca family company.
Mercer money hadn't only been moving outward.
It had been moving through Roman's family.
Roman stared at the screen.
“That isn't possible.”
Adrian didn't answer.
And for the first time, I understood why Dad's note warned me not to assume the DeLucas knew the whole truth.
May you like
Howard Mercer had committed crimes—but the money trail suggested someone inside Roman's family had helped him do it.
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