Chapter 2 - The Job She Was Never Supposed to Get
Bella stared at the screen until the numbers blurred.
$49,200.
Her number.
It could have been coincidence.
Fourteen times was not coincidence.
She closed the file.
Then opened it again.
Compliance work was built around patterns. Bella had spent years studying how criminals disguised money as ordinary business activity. The most dangerous transactions rarely looked dramatic. They looked boring.
Consulting fees.
Maintenance contracts.
Vendor reimbursements.
Numbers hidden among numbers.
Bella checked the first company.
North Lake Advisory.
Registered five weeks earlier.
No meaningful website.
No employees she could identify.
The second company was Mercer Freight Consulting.
The third was Halsted Risk Partners.
Each had received payments connected to the same authorization chain.
Each contained the sequence 49200.
Bella printed nothing.
She knew better.
Instead, she wrote transaction IDs by hand in the notebook Helena had bought her during her final year of college.
At 6:18 p.m., most of the floor emptied.
Benny appeared beside her cubicle.
“You know normal people go home?”
“I’ve heard rumors.”
“You’re ruining the curve for the rest of us.”
Bella smiled faintly.
Benny glanced at her screen.
“Vendor review?”
“Routine.”
His expression shifted for half a second.
Bella noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You looked worried.”
“I look worried whenever accounting software is open.”
He walked away too quickly.
Bella closed the database.
At 7:03, the executive elevator opened.
Lucas emerged alone.
He crossed the nearly empty floor and stopped beside her desk.
“You work late.”
Bella did not look up immediately.
“So do you.”
“That wasn’t an invitation to compare schedules.”
She finally met his eyes.
“Then what was it?”
Something almost resembling amusement appeared in his face.
Almost.
“You’ve been here three weeks.”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t contacted me.”
“You told me not to.”
“Most people hear instructions as challenges.”
“I don’t.”
Lucas looked at the notebook beside her keyboard.
“Are you happy here?”
Bella almost laughed.
“You didn’t hire me so I could be happy.”
Silence.
There it was.
The first acknowledgment.
Lucas pulled out the chair opposite her.
“I didn’t hire you.”
Bella’s stomach tightened.
“Your initials are on the authorization.”
“For the position.”
“So you did.”
“I authorized the creation of an additional compliance position. Human resources selected candidates.”
“After someone made sure my application reached the top.”
Lucas said nothing.
Bella leaned back.
“Why?”
“You had a degree.”
“So do thousands of people.”
“You had relevant qualifications.”
“So did hundreds.”
“You walked past the watch.”
Bella stared at him.
Lucas continued.
“I wanted to know what you would do with an opportunity nobody could accuse you of buying.”
“You mean an opportunity you secretly arranged.”
“I opened a door. You passed the interview yourself.”
Bella felt anger rising.
“You don’t get to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Move people around like pieces.”
Lucas’s face became unreadable.
“That is essentially my profession.”
“I’m not one of your companies.”
“No.”
“Then stop treating me like one.”
Lucas stood.
“Good night, Miss Kavalchuk.”
“Why $49,200?”
He stopped.
Bella watched his shoulders.
“Fourteen vendor records,” she said. “Same sequence.”
Lucas turned slowly.
For the first time since she had known him, Bella saw genuine surprise.
“What records?”
Her pulse accelerated.
If Lucas had planted the files, he was an exceptional actor.
Bella said nothing.
“Show me.”
“I’m a compliance analyst. There are procedures.”
“Bella.”
It was the first time he had used her first name since the hotel.
“Show me.”
She opened the database.
The folder was gone.
Bella searched again.
Nothing.
Lucas stepped closer.
“What exactly did you see?”
She explained.
His face hardened.
“Who gave you the file?”
“I don’t know.”
“You found it on your desk?”
“Yes.”
“Who knows you saw it?”
“Maybe Benny.”
Lucas immediately took out his phone.
“Don’t.”
He looked at her.
“You don’t know whether he had anything to do with it.”
“You don’t know that he didn’t.”
“That doesn’t make him guilty.”
“In my world, uncertainty gets people buried.”
“In mine, evidence matters.”
Lucas stared at her.
“That difference,” he said quietly, “may be why I put you here.”
He called security anyway, but he did not mention Benny.
Instead, he requested access logs.
At 8:02, they entered a private conference room.
Rianna Vaspuchcci was waiting.
She looked at Bella, then Lucas.
“Is there a problem?”
Lucas replied, “No.”
Rianna’s eyes lingered on Bella.
“Then why was I called?”
“You weren’t.”
The pleasantness disappeared from Rianna’s face.
“I saw the security request.”
Bella understood immediately.
Rianna had access to Lucas’s internal activity.
Lucas understood too.
“Go home, Rianna.”
“Lucas—”
“Now.”
Rianna left.
The glass door clicked shut.
Bella whispered, “She knows.”
“She knows something.”
“You trust her?”
“For four years.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Lucas looked toward the door.
“No.”
Security logs arrived twenty minutes later.
Someone had entered Bella’s floor at 5:52 that morning using an executive credential.
The credential belonged to Lucas.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
“Where were you?”
“At home.”
“Alone?”
His eyes met hers.
“Yes.”
Bella almost smiled at the irony.
“So your alibi is you?”
“My security cameras.”
Lucas requested footage.
The relevant thirty-seven minutes had been deleted.
Someone was using his credentials.
Someone wanted Bella to discover the transactions.
And someone had chosen $49,200 specifically to ensure she noticed.
“Who knows about the money?” Bella asked.
“Two people.”
“Who?”
“My accountant and me.”
“Name?”
Lucas hesitated.
“Anton Vaspuchcci.”
Bella’s eyes narrowed.
“Rianna’s father?”
“Yes.”
“When did he start working for you?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
Bella’s skin prickled.
Lucas’s phone vibrated.
A message.
He read it.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He handed Bella the phone.
A photograph showed Bella leaving St. Nicholas Church after Helena’s funeral.
The image had been taken from across the street.
Beneath it was a sentence.
SHE LOOKS LIKE HER REAL MOTHER.
Bella read it twice.
“My real mother?”
Lucas immediately called the number.
Disconnected.
Bella stared at the photograph.
“I was adopted.”
Lucas looked at her sharply.
“How old?”
“I don’t know exactly. My mother always said I came to her as an infant.”
“And Oxana?”
“Temporary name.”
Lucas went completely still.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No. You recognized it.”
He walked toward the window.
Bella followed.
“Lucas.”
“My mother had a sister.”
Bella waited.
“Her name was Oksana.”
The pronunciation was slightly different, but close enough to make the room suddenly feel smaller.
“What happened to her?”
“She died in the fire.”
Bella felt cold.
“The fire twenty-five years ago?”
Lucas nodded.
“My entire family died.”
Bella looked again at the message.
SHE LOOKS LIKE HER REAL MOTHER.
“Do you have a picture?”
Lucas did not answer.
“Lucas.”
Finally he unlocked his phone and opened an encrypted folder.
There were only four photographs.
He selected one.
A dark-haired woman stood beside a Christmas tree holding a baby wrapped in a white blanket.
Bella stopped breathing.
The woman had Bella’s eyes.
Not similar eyes.
Her eyes.
Bella enlarged the photograph.
Around the baby’s wrist was a hospital bracelet.
Only part of the name could be read.
…XANA D.
Bella dropped into a chair.
“No.”
Lucas stared at the photograph as though seeing it for the first time.
“My aunt disappeared from the house approximately an hour before the fire,” he said.
“You said she died.”
“That’s what I was told.”
“Who told you?”
Lucas’s jaw tightened.
“My father’s accountant.”
Bella already knew the answer before she asked.
“Who?”
Lucas looked at her.
“Anton Vaspuchcci.”
At that exact moment, Bella’s phone rang.
Pastor Burkhart.
She answered.
“Father?”
His voice was trembling.
“Bella, someone broke into the church.”
She stood.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. But my office…”
“What happened?”
“The envelope your mother left for you is gone.”
Bella looked at Lucas.
Then Pastor Burkhart whispered the sentence that changed everything.
May you like
“Bella, whoever took it knew exactly where Helena had hidden the truth about the Dracott family.”
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