Chapter 3 - The Photograph That Lied
For eight months, Nico had hated one photograph.
He had looked at it hundreds of times.
Norah outside the Ambassador Hotel.
Marco Moretti beside her.
His hand apparently touching her elbow.
Two people caught in what looked like a secret meeting.
Vincent had placed the photograph on Nico’s desk the previous November.
“I wish I didn’t have to show you this,” he had said.
Nico remembered every word.
“Your investigator confirmed it.”
Nico had stared at the image until rage turned cold.
He had not confronted Norah.
That would have required admitting something he considered weakness.
Fear.
Instead, he watched.
He became distant.
He searched her accounts.
He tested her loyalty.
He waited for her to explain something she did not know she was accused of.
Now, three weeks after Norah disappeared, Nico looked at the same photograph and saw what he had missed.
Arthur’s reflection.
Standing beside Norah.
The original image had been cropped.
Nico slowly raised his eyes.
“Tell me.”
Arthur looked exhausted.
“I was there.”
Vincent remained silent.
Nico stepped toward Arthur.
“Why?”
“Because Norah called me.”
“For what?”
Arthur looked at the photograph.
“She was arranging something for you.”
Nico frowned.
“What?”
“Your father’s letters.”
Nico froze.
His father had died twelve years earlier.
Afterward, several personal documents vanished during a dispute between branches of the family.
Arthur continued.
“Moretti’s father had them. Norah discovered it through an estate attorney.”
Nico looked stunned.
“She spent six months trying to recover them.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because she wanted them for your birthday.”
The room went silent.
Arthur looked toward Vincent.
“Marco agreed to return them. I went with Norah because she didn’t trust meeting him alone.”
Nico’s voice lowered.
“You knew I thought she was meeting Moretti secretly.”
“No.”
Arthur’s eyes hardened.
“I knew you were treating her like she’d done something wrong. I didn’t know why.”
Vincent interrupted.
“This proves nothing.”
Nico turned.
Vincent continued.
“Maybe Arthur is covering for her now.”
Arthur laughed without humor.
“Careful.”
Nico opened another document.
A digital signature.
Then another.
Every false payment linked to Norah had passed through systems Vincent controlled.
Still, Nico was not ready to accuse the man who had managed his finances for eleven years.
“Why?” Nico asked.
Vincent leaned back.
“If you think I did something, say it.”
Nico studied him.
“I’m asking why someone would want Norah out of my life.”
Vincent smiled.
“Maybe because she made you weak.”
Arthur’s face changed.
Nico’s did not.
Vincent continued.
“You changed after her. You hesitated. You canceled meetings because she was sick. You questioned methods you never questioned before. You started talking about expanding legitimate holdings instead of protecting what your father built.”
Nico’s gaze sharpened.
“And that bothered you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Vincent stood.
Nico blocked the door.
Not threateningly.
Simply standing there.
For the first time, Vincent’s confidence faltered.
Nico placed Norah’s ledger against his chest.
“She found this in three weeks.”
Arthur corrected him.
“Less.”
Nico almost smiled.
Then the pain returned.
Three years beside a woman whose intelligence he had admired.
Eight months doubting her because another man handed him a photograph.
And one sentence he had spoken to prove he was not vulnerable.
He wondered where Norah was.
What she thought of him.
Whether she had cried after leaving.
The thought made his chest ache.
Vincent suddenly said, “You want the truth?”
Nico looked at him.
“You weren’t supposed to fall in love with her.”
Arthur went still.
Nico’s eyes narrowed.
Vincent continued.
“She was supposed to be temporary.”
“What are you talking about?”
Vincent glanced at Arthur.
“You really don’t know?”
Arthur stepped forward.
“Vincent.”
“No. Let him hear.”
Vincent smiled bitterly.
“The first time Nico met Norah wasn’t an accident.”
Nico stared at him.
He remembered it.
A charity gala.
Norah standing beside a table arguing with a hotel manager because an elderly waitress had been blamed for breaking a champagne tower.
Nico had watched her defend someone she did not know.
Then he approached.
Norah had looked at his expensive suit and said, “If you’re here to tell me the manager is right, save your breath.”
He had fallen a little in love with her before learning her name.
Vincent now said that meeting had been arranged.
“By whom?”
Vincent looked at Arthur.
Arthur’s face had gone pale.
Nico turned.
“Arthur?”
Arthur said nothing.
“Tell me.”
Finally, Arthur sighed.
“Your father.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“My father was dead.”
“Yes.”
“Then explain.”
Arthur walked toward the window.
“Twelve years ago, before your father died, he created a contingency plan.”
Nico stared.
“For what?”
“For you.”
Arthur turned.
“He knew the family business was swallowing you. He was afraid you’d become exactly what he had become.”
Nico’s jaw tightened.
Arthur continued.
“He left instructions. Names. People he believed might someday help you build a different life.”
“Norah was on a list?”
“No.”
Arthur looked toward the photograph.
“Her father was.”
Norah’s father, Daniel Ellis, had died when she was seventeen.
She rarely spoke about him.
An accountant.
That was what Nico knew.
Nothing more.
Arthur said, “Daniel Ellis worked for your father.”
Nico took a step backward.
“No.”
“He discovered money disappearing from DeLuca companies years ago.”
Vincent’s face remained still.
Arthur continued.
“Daniel was preparing evidence.”
“What happened?”
“He died before delivering it.”
Nico remembered Norah telling him her father had died in a highway accident.
Arthur’s voice lowered.
“Your father never believed that was the full story.”
Nico looked at Vincent.
Vincent was no longer smiling.
Arthur pointed at the ledger.
“Your father believed someone inside the organization was stealing from him. He believed Daniel Ellis discovered who.”
Nico finally understood.
Norah had not been targeted because she was his girlfriend.
She had been targeted because she was Daniel Ellis’s daughter.
And whoever was manipulating the books feared she might finish what her father began.
“Where is she?” Nico asked Arthur.
“I don’t know.”
Vincent suddenly moved toward the table.
Arthur blocked him.
Nico picked up the ledger.
Something slipped from the back cover.
A sealed envelope.
They all stared at it.
Norah had written across the front:
Nico — open this only after you know who Daniel Ellis was.
Nico tore it open.
Inside was a photocopy of a letter written seventeen years earlier.
The handwriting belonged to Nico’s father.
The final sentence read:
If anything happens to Daniel, the man responsible will be the person sitting closest to my son.
Nico slowly looked around the room.
Arthur.
Vincent.
Then his eyes fell on another name written beneath the letter.
A name none of them expected.
Anthony DeLuca.
Nico’s uncle.
May you like
The man who had helped raise him after his father died.
And the man scheduled to arrive in Chicago the next morning.
