Chapter 3 - The Dead Man Who Hired Her
Natalie didn’t sleep.
At 3:17 the next morning, she sat in Roman’s executive suite wearing a borrowed hotel robe over her dress, drinking coffee that tasted exactly as terrible as she had always claimed.
Roman stood by the window.
“You were right,” he said.
Natalie looked up.
“About?”
“The coffee.”
Despite everything, she laughed.
It surprised both of them.
Then the silence returned.
On the table between them lay her original employment records.
Six years earlier, Natalie had applied for an assistant events coordinator position.
Victoria had rejected her.
Forty-eight hours later, someone had reversed the decision using an executive authorization code belonging to Carlo Duca.
A dead man.
“Did you know my family?” Roman asked.
“No.”
“Your parents?”
“My mother died when I was nineteen. My father left when I was eight.”
“Your grandparents?”
“My grandmother raised me.”
“Name?”
“Evelyn Brooks.”
Roman’s face changed.
Natalie noticed instantly.
“You know that name.”
Roman didn’t answer.
“Roman.”
It was the first time she had called him by his first name.
He turned.
“My father had an assistant named Evelyn.”
Natalie stood.
“No.”
“She worked for him for seventeen years.”
“No. My grandmother was an accountant.”
“For Carlo Duca.”
Natalie stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
Roman opened an old personnel database.
A photograph appeared.
Natalie’s knees nearly weakened.
Her grandmother.
Younger, but unmistakable.
Evelyn Brooks.
Senior financial administrator.
Duca Hospitality Group.
Natalie sat again.
“She never told me.”
Roman studied the file.
“She resigned eleven years ago.”
“Why?”
“No reason listed.”
Natalie remembered her grandmother’s final years.
Evelyn had become increasingly private. She refused to discuss her old job. She kept boxes locked in the attic.
When she died, Natalie had been too overwhelmed to examine everything.
“What happened two years after she resigned?” Natalie asked.
“My father died.”
“And three years after that, someone used his credentials to hire me.”
“Yes.”
Natalie looked toward the window.
“Maybe Grandma arranged it.”
“Using credentials belonging to a dead man?”
“She was an accountant. Maybe she knew the system.”
Roman shook his head.
“My father’s executive code changed every thirty days. Only three people could generate a new one.”
“Who?”
“My father. His chief financial officer.”
“And?”
Roman looked at her.
“Me.”
Natalie’s skin chilled.
“Are you saying somebody used your credentials?”
“I’m saying somebody had access they shouldn’t have had.”
Later that morning, Natalie returned to her apartment with two hotel security employees waiting discreetly downstairs.
Roman insisted.
Natalie complained.
Roman ignored her.
She climbed into her grandmother’s attic storage space.
Dust covered the boxes.
EVELYN — TAXES.
EVELYN — PHOTOS.
CHRISTMAS.
Natalie searched for nearly an hour.
Then she found a small metal cashbox.
Locked.
A key had been taped beneath it.
“Of course,” Natalie whispered. “Paranoid Grandma.”
Inside were photographs, letters, and an old Harrington Grand employee badge.
Then Natalie found an envelope.
Across the front, in Evelyn’s handwriting, were four words:
For Natalie, when necessary.
Her hands trembled.
Inside was a letter.
Natalie,
If you are reading this, something I hoped would remain buried has returned.
You must understand something first.
Carlo Duca was not the man newspapers described.
He made mistakes. Serious ones.
But toward the end of his life, he was trying to repair what he could.
I helped him.
Natalie stopped.
Her grandmother had known Roman’s father personally.
She continued.
There were accounts hidden inside the hospitality company. Carlo discovered that someone close to him had been using legitimate businesses to move money without his permission.
We collected evidence.
Before we could expose the person responsible, Carlo died.
Natalie’s heartbeat quickened.
I became afraid.
Not for myself.
For you.
So I disappeared.
But I left one safeguard.
If anyone ever activates the old accounts again, certain records will eventually lead to you.
Not because you are responsible.
Because I trusted you to recognize dishonesty when you saw it.
Natalie covered her mouth.
Her grandmother had deliberately created a trail.
The strange hiring authorization.
The vendor records.
Her presence inside the hotel.
None of it had been accidental.
The final paragraph was shorter.
There is one person you may trust if the accounts return.
Carlo’s son.
Roman.
But only if he has become the man Carlo hoped he would become.
Natalie read that sentence three times.
Her phone rang.
Roman.
She answered immediately.
“I found something.”
“So did I.”
“What?”
“Victoria Crane disappeared.”
Natalie stood.
“What do you mean disappeared?”
“She left the hotel at 2:11 a.m. Her apartment is empty.”
“Do you think she ran?”
“I think someone wanted us to believe she did.”
Natalie looked again at her grandmother’s letter.
“There’s more.”
She searched the box.
At the bottom was a brass key.
Attached to it was a small tag.
H.G. 417.
“Roman?”
“Yes?”
“Does the hotel have a room 417?”
A pause.
“No.”
Natalie frowned.
“Are you sure?”
“The fourth floor ends at 416.”
She looked at the key.
“Then why did my grandmother have a Harrington Grand key marked 417?”
Roman arrived twenty minutes later.
Together, they entered the hotel’s fourth floor.
Rooms 401 through 416 lined the corridor.
Nothing else.
Natalie studied the architecture.
Then she noticed something.
Between 416 and the emergency stairs was a decorative wall wider than it needed to be.
Roman called engineering.
Old blueprints were retrieved.
The original Harrington Grand had indeed contained another room.
417.
It had been sealed during renovations twelve years earlier.
Before Carlo died.
Workers removed a decorative panel.
Behind it was a door.
Natalie inserted Evelyn’s key.
It turned.
The room beyond smelled of dust and old paper.
There was no bed.
No furniture.
Only filing cabinets.
Roman stepped inside.
Natalie followed.
Hundreds of documents filled the drawers.
Old contracts.
Bank records.
Vendor payments.
Photographs.
Her grandmother and Carlo had hidden an entire archive.
Roman found a tape recorder.
He pressed play.
Static filled the room.
Then Carlo Duca’s voice emerged.
“If Roman ever hears this, it means Evelyn was right.”
Roman froze.
Natalie looked at him.
The recording continued.
“The person stealing from us is someone Roman trusts.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“I don’t have enough proof yet. Evelyn believes we should go to the authorities immediately. She may be right.”
A pause.
“But if anything happens to me, Roman must understand that the threat isn’t outside the family.”
Natalie stopped breathing.
Carlo said one final sentence.
“The person responsible knows everything about my son.”
The recording ended.
Roman stood completely still.
Natalie touched his arm.
He looked down at her hand.
For once, Roman Duca did not look intimidating.
He looked like a son hearing his dead father’s voice after nine years.
Natalie quietly withdrew her hand.
Then she noticed a photograph beneath the recorder.
She picked it up.
Carlo stood outside the Harrington Grand.
Beside him was Evelyn.
And beside Evelyn stood a younger man Natalie immediately recognized.
Vincent Hale.
Roman’s attorney.
Roman’s closest adviser.
His friend for more than fifteen years.
Natalie turned the photograph over.
Evelyn had written something on the back.
May you like
Three words.
Don’t trust Vincent.
